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Teachers- Looking for a way to talk to your students about war this Memorial Day?

Parents- Trying to make your kids understand the importance of remembering those who gave their lives for our country?

Lee & Low has some great titles that will get your kids interested and help them understand the great sacrifices made by our men and women at arms, what really makes someone a hero, and the impact of war on a level they can relate to.

Heroes by Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee

Set during the ’60s with the Vietnam war going on and World War II popular in the media, Japanese American Donnie Okada always has to be the “bad guy” when he and his friends play war because he looks like the enemy portrayed in the media. When he finally has had enough, Donnie enlists the aid of his 442nd veteran father and Korean War veteran uncle to prove to his friends and schoolmates that those of Asian descent did serve in the U.S. military.

Check out the Teacher’s Guide for additional discussion ideas!

Quiet Hero: The Ira Hayes Story written and illustrated by S.D. Nelson

A biography of Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the six soldiers to raise the United States flag on Iwo Jima during World War II, an event immortalized by Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph.

Don’t miss out on the BookTalk with S.D. Nelson, or the accompanying Teacher’s Guide.

When the Horses Ride By: Children in the Times of War by Eloise Greenfield, illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist

Through rhythmic words, photos, and original art, this collection of poems about children throughout history focuses on their perceptions of war and how war affects their lives. A great way to introduce the topic of war into discussion with your children and the ramifications they may not have considered.

For some insight from the author, take a look at this BookTalk with Eloise Greenfield.

Be sure to leave comments below on how discussions about war went in your classroom or with your own children; we’d love to hear from you!

I look at the calendar and it tells me it's the middle of May. The middle of May? Seriously? Another school year is wrapping up, television shows are having their finales, and summer is just around the corner...literally.

Here are some signs that summer is almost here:

People Tweeting about the prom: So many friends of mine have been posting about getting their son or daughter ready for the prom. Amazing how the girls love the shopping, picking out their dress, how they'll wear their hair and makeup, and the boys just complain that they have to stop playing video games long enough to take a shower and get ready. LOL!!



School's Out: There's no better feeling than the last school bell ringing to signify the end of a school year and the start of summer vacation. I remember that faithful bus ride home every year where people would celebrate by shaking up Coke cans and spraying them on each other. No one got off the bus dry. (I'm sure that's not permitted theses days.)



Picking up the boys at the airport: With the end of school, that means my fiance's son's will be joining us on the RV until they go back to school in August. They're flying up to Baltimore from Atlanta where we'll spend a few days in Gettysburg, then up to Boston, and then to Illinois and upstate New York for events and then down to Florida. We're planning on catching the VERY LAST launch ever of the space shuttle program.



Memorial Day: The official opening of summer! The campground is full of people with their grills and lawn chairs already set out. The pool will be open soon and hopefully, the sun will grace the east coast with its presence.



Good books to read: Well, my fifth GHOST HUNTRESS book, THE DISCOVERY, just came out and it would make excellent beach reading. So would any of the books from the Buzz Girls. Get them online, at the bookstore, or from us directly. Or, try downloading a digital copy for your eReader. Whatever the case, enjoy escaping into the story as you soak up the sun.



So what are some signs for you that summer is on the way?

Hugs,
Marley = )

Who are you remembering this Memorial Day?

Today is the beginning of the holiday weekend–that official weekend of the BBQ season, that weekend in which the Indy 500 is run and people from all over cheer for their favorite driver/team, that weekend in which families visit the cemeteries to place wreathes on the graves of family members who have gone before them. But first it was the weekend used to pay homage to those who fought and died for the freedoms given to the people of this country.

In small towns across the country parades will march down main streets, bands will play, members of the VFW and American Legion will march and wave or ride and wave to those standing curbside with hands over hearts as  the high school band plays The Star Spangled Banner. There will be laughter, cheering, balloons and memories.

Toddlers will wave their tiny flags on a stick from their parent’s arms. Small children will race among the viewers or stand quietly beside the grown-ups, trying to discover why the parade is happening on this weekend. Teens will watch from the sidelines, some solemn for they have older siblings fighting overseas right now, or they know others who are in a war zone. Other teens understand that these men and women were parading for their great-grandfathers, grandfathers, uncles, or fathers.

Tears flow easily at these small cousins of big city celebrations. Perhaps it is because these citizens feel the loss of even one young person to war as a personal one. Maybe it is because they still remember the reason the holiday was created. Regardless of reason, this small town parade has significance to these citizens.

And in just over a month they will come together again for another parade. This one will commemorate the founding of this country and the reason why Memorial Day’s creation was allowed. The Fourth of July has also become a holiday of BBQ’s, picnics, swimming parties, and let’s not forget fireworks. Those fireworks symbolize the rocket’s red glare referenced in The Star Spangled Banner performed a month earlier during that Memorial Day parade in a small town in the USA.

And what are your plans for this weekend?

Claudsy

Is it me or does the week before a long weekend always go particularly slowly?  Wednesday feels like a month ago.  Luckily, despite my whining, Friday has arrived and so has Memorial Day Weekend.  I hope you have lovely weather, delicious barbecues, and some time to relax with a good book.  Below are some links to get you through the day.  See you all on Tuesday!

Tina Fey wins the Mark Twain Prize for Humor!

Speaking of Mark Twain, here comes his autobiography.

Are we really friends with our friends?

Sequencing the bugs in our bodies.

A simple swab can save a life.

Do paywalls kill traffic?

The unicorn at Microsoft was real.

The Kagan kids.

Bookshelves to make you drool.

EMT’s in Massachusetts and New Hampshire faked their papers.

I recently visited the Phillips Collection and was thrilled to see Renoir’s famous painting Luncheon of the Boating Party.  After having a long discussion with friends about the intriguing people in the painting,  I decided that Susan Vreeland’s historical novel with the same title was moving to the top of my summer reading list.  I picked it up at the library today to read right after I finish my current book club book The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

As you can imagine, we often have discussions at the office about what everyone is reading, especially leading up to Memorial Day weekend.  I learned that several of my colleagues are reading the Millenium Triology by Stieg Larsson. I didn’t even know the triology had a name. I bought the first two for my Dad for Christmas last year and hope to “borrow” them back when I see him in July. I heard there is already a line forming!

Below are some other books on staff summer reading lists, quite a variety as usual:

• Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore
• The Shack by William P. Young
• Building Social Business by Muhammad Yunus
• Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

What books are catching your eye this summer?

Maira Kalman considers the soldiers who prepare for war.

Memorial Day started out kind of slow. I snuck into the office to write. My daughter vegged out on cartoons. Until my husband suddenly appeared with the kite.

We hadn't been kite flying in ages. Suddenly, the house was a blur of action. Kite flying. It was contagious. We couldn't get out the door fast enough, despite clouds that threatened rain (and a Ben Franklin kind of kite flying experience should thunder show up too). We were off on an adventure to the park.

Only problem. Not a lot of wind. We were running all over the place trying to get that kite into the air. I was beginning to despair.

Then again, there is nothing quite like the determination of a seven year old. If there was even the hint of a breeze, we were going to find it.

And we did!

The only thing was, once my daughter had gotten a taste of kite flying, there was no holding her back. We stayed until the cows came home (all of them).

Which didn't bother any of us. It was a blast.

Even the ice cream man showed up. There really is something about the ice cream man that screams excitement. I couldn't get the dollar bills out fast enough before my daughter was grasping them in her fist, throwing the kite string to the wind (which I then ran after), while my husband ran after her, trying to keep her from zigging into traffic just to stop the ice cream truck.

I think every ice cream driver gets a kick out of seeing how fast he can get those kids running. Personally, I think if they wanted to really break records at track and field events, they should pull out an ice cream truck. American runners at least would be reaching new speeds, I'm telling you. My daughter did.

She got her ice cream.

Then we eased out under a huge, old tree and watched her slurp down a crushed ice, while we built imaginary cities out of twigs, old leaves, dandelions and acorns.

Best Memorial Day ever.

Luis Alberto Urrea. Into the Beautiful North. NY: Little Brown, 2009.
ISBN-10: 0316025275
ISBN-13: 978-0316025270

Michael Sedano


Don't say anything negative when I ask this question: Into the Beautiful North is one of those novels a reader will not put aside until its conclusion, ¿No?

Absolutely yes.

But then the reader will ask if Urrea's current novel is worthy of the praise heaped upon the author's notably wonderful novel, The Hummingbird's Daughter?

No. It's not.

On the other hand, Hummingbird's Daughter is an impossible work to follow; that is one superb novel. Whatever you are reading next, stop that. Go to your library or bookseller and take delivery of The   Hummingbird's Daughter. Read it. You're welcome de adelantado.

Into the Beautiful North, is not Hummingbird's Daughter. How could it be? A buddy novel, Urrea wisely sets out not to build on Hummingbird but to do something completely different. And quite well, ese, if you get what I mean, y si no, pues, no. But Into the Beautiful North is one of those funny pieces that comes along only every once in a while, so, finishing the dramatic Hummingbird, read this next one; you owe it to yourself.

Would any film fanatic compare "The Wizard of Oz", let's say, to "El Norte," or, maybe "Spanglish"? As an intellectual romp, one might. Howzabout comparing Into the Beautiful North to "The Magnificent Seven?" Now there's the delightful parallel; not mine, but Urrea's. His crew of colorful characters venture out from backwater Sinaloa to the mercilless frontera of San Diego / Tijuana, perhaps the two worst cities in the world, on a "mission from God" like los hermanos azul. 

How refreshing to discover a border crossing story that is a comedy. Not that Into the Beautiful North, is not a deadly serious border crossing story; it is. But the crossing ain't the tale, it's the cultural gaps that define the limits of these characters' experience, and infuse the plot with a sense of dread that, thankfully, Urrea holds in abeyance.

On their first crossing, they get caught. Not in a calamitous tragedy for the three teenage girls, but for their friend, Tacho, a gay vato who's assumed the role of protector and adult. Tacho gets an asskicking by assholes from the ICE. La migra, the regular tipos, are just regular good people doing a job, but these newly appointed jerks have no sense of honor. But then, Urrea sets up the beating long in advance of the mid-novel crossing.

Tacho has a lot of smarts that, owing to Mexico's extreme poverty, never had the benefit of a classroom. He's not ashamed of his sexuality, nor do his fellow villagers shun him for being himself. Outsiders, like the corrupt cops who come through selling mota to tourist surfers, could make life a misery. Tacho laughs at their hatred by taking the stereotypically gay limp-wristed posture as the name of his bar, La Mano Caida. As Tacho and the three luscious teenage girls are being processed back to TJ at the San Ysidro lock-up, he calls out the name of his business. The mensos from ICE hear Tacho wrong; they hear a terrorist organization, "Al Kaeda." It's a funny phonetic trick but also a satiric gut punch. As a literary device, it strikes me as a contrivance. The one weak element in an otherwise brilliant novel. I wonder if Urrea came up with the joke first, then forced the plot to arrive at that moment?

Ni modo. Pretend you've never read Urrea's earlier work and take Into the Beautiful North for itself. You'll laugh, breathe sighs of relief, nod your head knowingly at the deadly serious facts that rest just beneath the surface of this wonderfully comedic satire of manners, love, lust, and immigration.

Memorial Day, 2009.

Every year I struggle to defeat my sentimental nature that tends to the maudlin. This year, I lost, and sank into a green funk, staring into the faces of some soldiers I trained with back in 1969. A friend asked if I know where these vatos are today, if they lived through that year? I do not know, and I do not want to know.



The storms start out there, on Monterey Bay. Grey blue haze obscures the horizon between sea and sky. Eyes front, but the vista compels our eyes to dart left, to take in the wondrous mottled light beyond the red roofs and yellow barracks, past the sparkling white sand of the firing range. On the water, bright patches where sunlight penetrates the morning dank define the luminous swell and ebb of the tide. Darker greys wash down from the ether shouting rain! Wetness swooshes across the water, heading directly toward us. “The Daily Dozen.” Windmill stretches. Jumping jacks. Jump thrust. “United States Army Drill Number One, Exercise Number Five, everyone’s favorite, the Push Up.” We drop to the front leaning rest position and begin the four count exertion. “One, two, three, ONE, Drill Sergeant, one two three TWO, Drill Sergeant…” Peripheral vision of breathtaking beauty counterweights a boot shouting in your ear, “keep your butt down, Trainee!”

We smell the rain coming, pushing the air before it, enveloping us in cool humidity that smells wet, that raises gooseflesh. Now we hear its relentless arrival. Below us, Ft. Ord has surrendered to its drenching. Visibility zero down there in forbidden territory. We are maggots, confined to The Hill.

The first heavy drops of water strike us, a few more, more. At the order we pull our waterproof poncho from our gear, hunker down under the protective sheet. We are forty green tipi spaced dress right dress across the platoon’s PT field. The rain noise drowns out any other sound but the swirling wind pushing up from the bay. An unrelenting volume of water strikes our heads and backs. We savor these moments of privacy, alone with our own thoughts and memories, for now the Army only this dull green light and the sound of the passing squall. We feel rivulets form, tingle, and stream the length of our spine as the water courses down to the ground. We are blind; we can see only our boot toes and the corona of daylight that glows at the periphery of our waterproof poncho. Mud splashes against our now scuffed, once spit-shined combat boots. Run-off forms around our toes, puddling fashions the outlines of our leather as erosion sculpts a memory of our presence on the land.

The noise abates. The rain passes. We obey. Ponchos off. Stand tall. Monterey Bay sparkles with magical light, whales, porpoises, salmon, sardines, Steinbeck…"U.S. Army Drill Number One, Exercise Number Five. The Push Up…”

We bitched and moaned. We laughed. I hope we all lived.


So here we are, the last Tuesday of May, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except you are here. See you in June.

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Mouse down to the Comments counter below and Klik. If you'd like to be a La Bloga Guest Columnist, click here .

I just want to wish all of our veterans my gratitude to them for keeping me and my family safe as well as the world as we know it.

Okay, I'm sitting outside, listening to some Muse and banging from the neighbor (which is okay), but I took a picture of the book Shiver that someone will win when I hit 200 people. I thought you'd want to see it enjoying itself outside in the gorgeous weather.







And of course me in my Boston Red Sox hat. Yep, that is me! Trying to take my own picture. I suck at it, but for those of you, who'll see me at BEA, I'll look not so icky! :)

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional kick off for the summer season.  For me, it’s also an excuse to eat more ice cream than I should and it marks the start of a new season of reading.  Although I probably read the most in the winter, when it’s cold outside and toasty warm inside, nothing is quite like a good book at the beach or under a shady tree in the park.

This summer my book club is reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a debut novel by Jamie Ford.  I also hope to read two books I received for my birthday, The Zookeeper’s Wife and The Piano Teacher.   I’d like to finally get to the last two Harry Potter books as well. (I know I’m way behind the times on this one!)

My complete reading list would probably take me at least 5 years to get through, but still I’m always looking for more good reads.  I asked some of my colleagues what they were reading this summer.  A few were too shy to divulge their “fluff” reads.  (I think summer is the perfect time for some fluff!) Anna said that she’s taking the mystery Mudbound by Hillary Jordan to the beach and Rose said she will be reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes and Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

Bonnie is taking on the classics starting with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn followed by a long list that ends with A Farewell to Arms.  Now this is something I’ve always wanted to do but have never had the courage.  Like Bonnie, I somehow missed a lot of classic reading as a kid.

In addition to reading Hidden Kitchens by The Kitchen Sisters by Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva and The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets by Kym Douglas and Cindy Pearlman (her fluff read), Caroline had some fun summer reading plans.  “I plan to read the Complete Adventures of Curious George to my two nephews.  Curious George is my favorite childhood reading and I want to share this anthology with the boys.”

So, what’s on your summer reading list?

In her recent post, "Read Your Brains Out" (part of our Children's Book Week series), Mary Ann Rodman shared some references for recommended reading. As a follow-up, we've added links from this blog to online recommended reading lists--see the sidebar section labeled "Children's/YA Reading Lists." Now you have no excuse for not "reading your brains out." (And if you have suggestions for other

To all who have died so that I can live free--thank you.

In observance of Memorial Day tomorrow, I'm posting a few pictures of the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. My upcoming book, The Clearing, partly takes place in 1944 -- so I made it a point to head out to the monument last month, and it really brought home to me the sacrifices of our men and women who fought in WWII and the other wars since then. Not to mention those who are serving our country here and abroad in harm's way.

The Arizona Memorial is a floating memorial that sits above the wreckage of the ship. It's a very modern, minimalistic monument that you can walk inside, and even look down into viewing wells that show pieces of the rusting ship below. Even today, gallons and gallons of oil and other debris are leaking from the ship at the bottom of the harbor.





















You take a little boat that brings you from the visitor's center to the memorial, and walk onto the monument itself. An open air design gives the feeling of being in a hallowed place, almost like a chapel. And considering the Arizona is the final resting place of many servicemen, it's fitting.

The crowd that comes out to see the monument is varied. Young and old, veterans and civilians, Americans and foregin folks -- all visiting to pay their respects and solemnly acknowledge the tragedy of war.

One of the best tributes to our fallen troops, in my opinion, is taking very good care of their surviving comrades.  To celebrate Memorial Day we have excerpted a piece from the beginning of The G.I. Bill: A New Deal For Veterans, by Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin which looks at just how beneficial the G.I Bill was not only for troops but for all of America.  Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies and the Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at Cornell University.  Stuart M. Blumin is Professor Emeritus of American History, Cornell University.

In July 1995 President Bill Clinton spoke at a commemorative service in Warm Springs, Georgia, soon after the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Looking back on FDR’s long and remarkable presidency, Clinton identified as its “most enduring legacy” an achievement that came neither from the Hundred Days of initial New Deal legislation nor from the structural reforms of the Second New Deal, nor even from FDR’s successful prosecution of World War II.  Rather, Clinton pointed to the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944-The GI Bill- a law passed late in Roosevelt’s presidency, following his initiatives but shaped by many others besides himself.  The GI Bill, Clinton observed, “gave generations of veterans a chance to get an education, to build strong families and good lives, and to build the nation’s strongest economy ever, to change the face of America.”  This one piece of legislation, he continued, perhaps with an eye to his own presidential legacy, “helped unleash a prosperity never before known.”  It was a New Deal for veterans and, through them, for the postwar nation as a whole.

Fifty years earlier this would have seemed a very strange choice for an FDR encomium, but by the 1990s it was as reasonable as choosing Social Security, the WPA, or victory over the Nazis.  When Clinton spoke, praise for the GI Bill was widespread and partook of the increasing respect and nostalgia among the vast majority of Americans for what the journalist Tom Brokaw would soon call “the Greatest Generation”-the young adults (many of them boys and girls who quickly became adults) who, in foxholes and bombers, shipyards and munitions factories, helped rescue the world from fascism.  The very large numbers who had served in the military during the war returned to help create a peacetime society of unprecedented prosperity, and it came to be generally understood that the GI Bill was the essential instrument of their successful reintegration into civilian life.  Clinton, himself a postwar “baby boomer,” spoke for a generation of Americans who saw the GI Bill as the key to a kingdom of peace and plenty.

Praise for the GI Bill was is by no means restricted to members of FDR’s political party.  Bob Michel, a former Republican congressman from Peoria, Illinois, who served as minority leader in the House of Representatives for fourteen years (the longest minority leadership in U.S. history), has described the GI Bill as “a great piece of legislation” that “cut across the economic strata” and made it possible for “many thousands of veterans, including tens of thousands who would not have thought of college,” to get undergraduate degrees.  Michel points to the almost universal approval of the bill.  “I don’t know of anyone,” he reflects, “who has ever maligned it.”  Michel was himself a highly decorated World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the GI Bill.  Nonetheless, it is clear that his admiration for this legislation is not just informed by his own good fortune but also reflects the experiences of an entire generation.

Leaders from outside politics have also expressed admiration for the GI Bill, and these include many who do not ordinarily favor forceful government solutions to pressing social issues.  Two years before Clinton’s Warm Springs address the widely respected management theorist Peter F. Drucker wrote that future historians might welcome to regard the bill as “the most important event of the 20th century” in that its provisions for government-subsidized college education for World War II veterans “signaled the shift to the knowledge society.”  Drucker’s was a sophisticated appraisal of how one public initiative could, even as a largely unintended effect, unleash larger forces that would in turn transform an entire society.  His analysis reinforces, too, the popular perception of the bill as a product of bipartisan consensus, when what seemed to matter at the moment of its passage was not Democratic or Republican political advantage but the interests of the veterans and the nation at large.  It bears the stamp of neither party.  It is an American document, a mid-twentieth-century Bill of Rights.  The American Legion, pressing hard from late 1943 for its version of a comprehensive veterans’ bill, originally called it the Bill of Rights for GI Joe and GI Jane.

As is suggested by this language of rights and of GI Joe and Jane, much popular praise for the bill has been more personal than that of public leaders asked or inclined to reflect on its general significance.  It was what gave your father or grandmother or some elderly veteran who told you his story the opportunity to realize in his or her own lifetime what could have been only distant dreams while in a foxhole in the Ardennes, in a field hospital in Italy, or in a breadline during the Great Depression.  Personal success stories that trace back to the GI Bill abound within families and well beyond, some of them known to us, to be sure, because, like Bob Michel’s, they involved famous people.

The GI Bill-assisted career of William Rehnquist, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, is one such story.  Rehnquist had a brief taste of college life at Kenyon College before entering the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942.  When his military service was finished, he used the GI Bill to enroll at Stanford University (he was attracted by the California climate), where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science and eventually a law degree.  He became a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, and the rest, as they say, is history.  When asked years later how he had chosen his profession, Rehnquist answered, perhaps with tongue in cheek, “The GI Bill paid for an occupation test that told you what you ought to be.  They told me to be a lawyer.”

Jumping on cynthialord's bandwagon, here are a few home town photos.




I live in a small Connecticut town. We have lots of old colonial houses (some dating back to the Revolution).
This is the original public library, downtown. Now it's the geneaological research library.






The fife and drum corps marching in this year's Memorial Day parade.
Half the town watches, half the town marches (or so it seems!).






The view from my back yard, toward the pond and wetlands. We have geese, and ducks, and frogs, and beavers.