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If you’ve been reading the headlines on just one news service in the past few days, you’ve probably come away shaking your head and wondering what the future holds for you and yours.

Here are some examples of things in the news.

• A legislator in California has proposed that the 13 counties south of Los Angeles be separated from the main body of the state and granted statehood, to become the country’s 51^st. The apparent reason behind the proposal was that the state is simply too big to govern efficiently and needed to be pruned, so to speak. The proposed new state would be called “South California.”
• The huge iceberg that calved from a Greenland ice shelf last August is now in Canadian waters—Labrador, to be exact. Curious how it went west rather than east as common thought would expect, isn’t it? It’s being monitored by satellite from a beacon planted on its surface. Its original size was one-quarter of its parent ice shelf. That’s many billions of gallons of fresh water floating around desalinating the North Atlantic as the berg melts.
• All of those extended unemployment benefits and past government tax cuts will expire in January, leaving millions without any available income.
• Immediate results of Minnesota’s government shutdown due to lack of finances are beginning to come to the front. The Minnesota Zoo will suffer greatly if not funded soon, for instance. 

These are just a few of the headlines from yesterday and today. Granted, the Minnesota Zoo’s problems don’t seriously affect any of those living outside that state. Its fate does point to those smaller and less visible victims of gross financial distress plaguing each of the states this year.

 Costs of everything have risen, populations have increased and revenues have fallen due to the housing crunch and employment downturns.

 With unemployment benefits being suspended in January, Minnesota may not be the only state taking a leave of absence in the coming months. Those states hardest hit may follow suite in alarming numbers. And your state may just be one in the flock.

Canada is the one having to deal with the iceberg and its potential for danger—for now, at least. As the berg dissipates in the Atlantic’s northern waters the cumulative effect of all that fresh water in the Northern Atlantic will affect everyone. It’s become a favored climatological theory that desalinization of those waters helps bring about the slowing of the oceanic conveyor belt and hastens the cooling of the Earth to the point of a little ICE AGE.

And the one headline that really should clue the populace as to how shaky things are, both socially and economically, centers on the California issue. For a state—any state—to propose a split of both territory and legislation to the point of putting the motion before the state government is a rare event. It puts the spotlight even more brightly on the condition of some states to conduct business and remain solvent.

For any state to suggest such a territorial split encourages others to consider their own situations and conditions. The social ramifications are staggering for the coming year. At the moment it’s not important if the motion passes. The idea has already fallen ou

This action-packed, real-life story of Marie Peary, the daughter of Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary, is a wonderful introduction for tweens to the family life of a great explorer. Most often, the families of famous explorers were left at home in relative safety while the explorers (usually men) were gone for months and years at a time traveling to unknown and often dangerous parts of the world.

However, the Peary family was quite different. The real star of this unusual story is Peary's wife and Marie's mother, Josephine. Breaking with the convention of the day, Josephine traveled with her husband on several of his attempts to find and claim the North Pole. In fact, Marie was born in a remote northern corner of Greenland during one of these expeditions.

Marie's earliest memories and friendships were with some of the Inuit people who populated the far north. Her family depended on these kind people for help as guides and in constructing clothing to protect them against the fierce cold. Marie spent months and years living aboard ship going to and from Greenland. In fact, she and her mother, along with the ship's crew, were locked into the ice for 10 months in 1901 while trying to reach her father's new base camp.

Marie and her family developed close relationships with some of the Inuit and considered them friends. For a good part of her early life, Marie lived and played among Inuit children and had many adventures with them. Sledding down an ice mass and finding fun on nearby icebergs with her Inuit friends was a frequent pleasure.

The Inuits gave Marie the name "The Snow Baby" when she was born with blond hair and blue eyes. The book makes clear that there was much mutual respect and affection between the various explorer parties and the Inuits, and that there personal association extended over a period of years during Peary's many expeditions to the Arctic. In fact, it took until Marie was 16 before her father successfully journeyed to the North Pole and claimed it for the United States.

The book's author, Katherine Kirkpatrick, has made good use of her source material. This remarkable story is significantly enhanced with a generous collection of photographs. Even though some are extremely grainy, most are clear images of their lives in northern Greenland. The bulk of the book concerns itself with Marie's early years as part of the expeditions. Even though she and her mother spent years moving back and forth between this adventure life and a conventional life in the states, Marie was separated from her father for long stretches of time while he remained in the Arctic to winter and prepare for the next foray to the North Pole. He and his expedition did not successfully reach and claim the North Pole until 2009. Those years in between were consumed with supplying and resupplying the expedition between forays.

For anyone interested in a non-conventional life, or intrigued by the spirit of adventure necessary to pushing out to the ends of the world, this is a delightful story. For one thing, it centers on a girl's experience and that is unusual in itself. Secondly, Marie had extraordinary, enlightened parents who saw nothing wrong with exposing their daughter to such an exceptional life. Marie grew up to spend many years of her adult life helping her father organize his notes and papers for the early National Geographic Society.

And in 1932, traveling to Greenland with her own two sons, Marie placed a monument honoring her father at the place where she was born - "the first piece of land sighted when a ship approaches Greenland from America."

This is one of those books that sneaks up on you.  It caught me off guard.  Based on some positive reviews I’d read and the back cover blurb, I expected it to be cute. I thought I’d kind of like it.   I didn’t expect to be so swept up in Mildred’s quest to grow the perfect giant pumpkin that I was tempted to ignore my 7th period English class today.

But I was.

Marlane Kennedy captures the voice of a fifth grader who has settled into life with her dad after her mother’s death and explores the very real issues that face fifth grade girls – shopping for a first bra, getting ears pierced, and dealing with a bossy aunt.  I found hints of Judy Blume in the coming of age parts of this book and big servings of warm humor on just about every page. Add to that one huge issue – growing a HUGE pumpkin, and protecting it from bugs, fungus, drought, and tornadoes – and you have one amazing book. 

I was enchanted by the story and terribly intrigued by the process of growing a giant pumpkin.  I kind of want to try and grow one myself now. Mostly, though, I want to stand up and cheer for Mildred and for Marlane Kennedy.  ME AND THE PUMPKIN QUEEN is a little book with a giant-pumpkin sized heart.