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Bunjitsu Bunny's Best Move

by John Himmelman
(Henry Holt, 2015)

When Bunjitsu Bunny's Best Move came across my desk, my nose wrinkled and I thought, "Oh, this is going to be goofy."  But yet, I loved the cover art, and dove in anyway - taking it on my lunch break.  I'm so glad I did.

In fourteen, short, illustrated chapters, Isabel, John Himmelman's "bunjitsu" expert, learns important lessons of wisdom that are the perfect complement to her martial arts prowess.  In the second chapter, "Bunjitsu Bunny Fails," the usually perfect Isabel fails to master the "bunchucks."  She is profoundly disappointed,

     "You should not be unhappy," said Teacher.
     "But everyone passed the test except me," said Isabel.
     "Do you know what you did wrong?" asked Teacher.
     "Yes," said Isabel.
     "Can you do better?" asked Teacher.
     "Yes," said Isabel.
     "Lucky you," said Teacher. "They passed the test, but you learned the most."

Bunjitsu Bunny learns wisdom through action and observation.  Her lessons are similar to those imparted in John Muth's award-winning Zen Shorts picture books. However, the Bunjitsu Bunny books are simple chapter books for a suggested age range of 6-8 years.  The words are large, and the red, black and white illustrations are bold and full of expression.  The final chapter includes instructions for making an origami bunny face. Bunjitsu Bunny is a winner.

This is the second book in the series.  The first was Tales of Bunjitsu Bunny. (Images and excerpts here: [http://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250068064]) 


Bunjitsu Bunny is similar in reading level with one of my other favorites, Kate DiCamillo's Mercy Watson books.  I reviewed Mercy Watson to the Rescue in 2012. 

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Me, a year ago (left) and me now (right)

A year ago, a reader at an event asked to take a picture with me and posted it on Facebook. When I saw it, I didn’t look at our happy faces. I focused on the roll of fat around my waist.

I hadn’t been happy with my weight for a long time, but that really struck home.

Things I had tried to lose weight

• Weight Watchers. This actually mostly worked, but I was always hungry and I got tired of constantly counting points. Due to some quirks of the time period I attended, I cooked atrocious things like Black Bean Brownies (just because they are the same color doesn’t mean they taste like brownies - but WW used to give you lots of credit for fiber). Once at a family reunion we all got food poisoning and took turns hurrying to the bathroom. But the next day I had my lowest weigh-in ever at WW, so food poisoning FTW!


• Being mindful of every bite, taste, sensation. I actually think this is a good thing, but I usually read when I eat, so my concentration is fragmented.


• Eating 35 grams of carbs a day, two days a week. I remember sitting with my friend Amy every Thursday for 17 weeks when she did her chemo treatment and glumly regarding my turkey breast and hard boiled eggs. It turns out all kinds of high protein or high fat things have some carbs in them - and they add up fast.


• Living on 600 calories two days a week. A friend did this and lost eight pounds. I would pour over the menus and wonder how I could possibly do it since I am so active.

And that’s the thing. Even though writing is a sedentary occupation, I have always been otherwise active. I was fit AND fat, or mostly fit and fat. Last fall I had had to switch to walking instead of running, after having been diagnosed with moderate to severe arthritis in both knees. I asked my doctor if I could run again if I lost 20 pounds. You could practically see the thought bubble over his head: Like that will ever happen. Despite my knees, I was still active: walking, jiujitsu, kung fu, and weight lifting. However, study after study will tell you that you can’t lose weight through exercise.

But….

I had heard of friends of friends who lost a lot of weight once they started using a treadmill desk. And last fall I unexpectedly got some German money for Shock Point, which nearly ten years later still sells well over there.


So I bought a LIfeSpan treadmill desk, found an old computer (from 2008, but still runs what I need) and started using it when I wrote (and sometimes when I watched Netflix). I wear a Fitbit and went from putting in 12K steps a day to 25—30K. In the first eleven weeks, I lost eight pounds.

The pace has slowed now, but I’m still losing a pound every couple of weeks. Not that much different from Weight Watchers, but I am eating whatever I want! (Caveat: I mostly eat healthy.) I’m running again, and my knees feel fine. Every pound less is 3-4 pounds less on the knees.

And this morning I was down 22 pounds!

How to replicate this yourself

• Get a Lifespan desk


• Or try making one yourself (google DIY Treadmill Desk)


• Or try housewalking.

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My kung fu school is offering a knife-throwing class. It is very satisfying when you stick one. The throwing knives are heavy-about a pound each.

I got asked to stay after Brazilian jiu-jitsu class today to demonstrate my technique for the blackbelt but did not get a stripe on my belt.  I'm close though, I can feel it.  My partner was 22 years younger than me and weighed 250 pounds. (He also hasn't been doing it very long, so it's not as bad as it sounds.)  I got kneed in the forehead Wednesday (by a different partner) and kept waiting for the bruise to show up.  It finally did, mostly in a small black eye around my tear duct.

I am feeling very bad ass these days!

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My resolution for 2015 is a single word: risk. I'll be turning 56 this year. The opportunities I will have to take physical risks are narrowing.  I also want to take social risks, and emotional risks, and risks with my writing - all kinds of risks.

So far, I've had a frank conversation with someone I respect but who also used an exaggerated campy "gay" voice to make some points.  I think it was eye-opening for both of us.

And in three weeks, I'm signed up to do that Urban Escape and Evasion class, which includes a day spent trying to elude pursuers after you are "kidnapped."

This past weekend, I competed in a Brazilian Jiujitsu (grappling tournament).  In this tournament, we were split up by gender, but in my grappling classes I grapple with men, usually only with men since none of the other women in my school regularly take BJJ class.  One of my regular partners is 228 pounds, which let me tell you is a lot of weight when someone centers it and pins you.

For a long, long time, I said there was no way I would grapple past what I needed to do for whatever color of sash I was working on in kung fu. It felt too ob-gyn-y. Too rape-y. You couldn't tell me that one of the best positions was on your back with your legs wrapped around some guy's waist.  It seemed too vulnerable and weird.

Guys will often grow up wrestling with their friends.  None of the girls I know ever did that.

But then my kung fu school started offering BJJ classes four times a week and I started going to them. I am still don't have a very good offense. And at  my gender and my age and my weight compared to many of my partners, I mostly play defense.  But I have a damn good defense.

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I've been wanting to take my purple best test in kung fu forever, but a series of unfortunate events (death in family, medical error that resulted in hospitalization, and knee injury from running) conspired me to be out of town or out of commission whenever there was a belt test.

You have to demonstrate kicks, punches, grab counters, grappling, stick fighting, stances, forms, and more. Martial arts has been key to me being successfully able to describe physical enounters.

Last night I finally tested and got my purple belt.

Now all I need to do is get a single stripe on my belt in Brazilian jiujitsu and I'll be happy!

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When 81-year-old Pablo Casals, who was the world’s foremost cellist, was asked whey he continued to practice several hours a day, he answered: “Because I think I am making progress.”

Between the ages of eight and twenty-two, ee cummings wrote a poem a day.

In September, my kung fu school began offering Brazilian jiujitsu classes four times a week. You'll find me in nearly every one of them. Before that, grappling was only offered on Sundays, or for parts of kung fu classes.

I used to be creeped out by the idea of grappling. It seemed to rape-y, or ob-gyn-y. I mean, do you really expect me to believe that one of the better positions I can be in is on my back with my legs wrapped around someone? No thanks.

But then I started doing it more, and realized I actually liked it. It is the most intense exercise I have ever done ever. In the last month, I've seen two guys who were way younger than me and who wrestled in high school try out the class, and both ended up half way through class lying flat on their backs on the mat, spent.

And even though you make a lot of physical contact, jiujitsu is impersonal. The person's other body is just an obstacle that you have to deal with. It's only personal in that you like and respect your partner and would not deliberately injure them.

Getting better every day
Today several of my grappling partners made a point of telling me how much better I had gotten at jujitsu.

How did I get better? Practice. Making a lot of mistakes. Trying new things, only some of which worked. But mostly just by showing up.

If you do something a lot, even if only a small percentage of it is excellent, a small percentage of a lot is more than a small percentage of not very much.

Malcolm Gladwell famously said that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to make someone an expert.

Then a study said no, deliberate practice doesn't account for all of it.  They said practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games and 21% for music.  I think writing would be in there. Still one-fifth to one-fourth is a big chunk.

And I am a lot better writer working on my 27th book than I was on my first. I know what I'm doing. I feel it in my bones.

Just like I am beginning to with grappling.

I'm also learning to try new things.  Can I get a joint lock in this position? I don't know, but it's worth a try.  Instead of thinking about it, I try to just do it.

I'm trying to be more like that with my writing too. To turn off my internal editor and let the words flow.  I really like Writeordie.com for making it impossible to be critical and forcing me to write (I'll often set it for 500 words in 15 minutes).

Just do it
So if there's something you want to do and be good at, I think the old Nike slogan says it best:



I have carried this keychain or its brother since Nike introduced the slogan (and have backups bought off ebay stashed for when this one breaks).

I would modify it to:  JUST DO IT A LOT

So if you want to be a better poet, write four poems a week.  Or a poem a day. Lots of photographers do 365 projects, ie, they take a photo every day.  Are all those photos great? I'm sure not, but I'm also sure they end up with way more great photos than they would have otherwise. 

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I thought as I got older that things would become more static. After all, I've been married for 28 years (and it's still growing strong). I left my job nearly seven years ago. I thought things would go along more or less the same.

But the whole static thing - that's not happening.

Nora
First of all, this week marks the first anniversary of my mother's death. I guess I had known theoretically that my mom could die. But she had been around all my life, been there long before me.

But when she really did die, it rocked my world. After my dad died in 2003, we had become close friends, talked on the phone daily.

I spent the last three weeks of her life with her after she chose to go on hospice. I passed many long hours in the quiet house while she lay on her bed, not really napping, not really anything. The clocks ticked in unison, then opposite each other, then back again.

Toward the end the hospice nurse had me buy diapers, and later mom told me that by the time she needed them, she hoped she wouldn't give a shit. And then we both laughed. She was sharp and funny. The last sound she ever made was a laugh, after my brother claimed I was trying to kill him when the cot I had set up in her room collapsed under him.

There was a lot of laughter. Also I ate and ate and ate, chips, ice cream, weird frozen dinners from Grocery Outlet. And I hid in the laundry room or my old room and wept. I went for runs with tears streaming down my face.

When she died, she was the first person I wanted to tell.

Knees
In March, I ran to my kung fu weapons class. And then I attempted to run back again. But my right leg hurt, like someone had jammed my knee backward. (The class had not involved anything that hurt.)

And then I started having a pain run down my leg. So bad I wasn't sure how I would go to Detroit, make it through airports, sleep in a hotel bed, and do a ton of school visits. I managed it, but since then my leg and knee have been not been good.

When I first went to PT back in March, I was told my insurance would cover 77 visits a year. I laughed.  Who needs 77 visits? I was sure it would be cleared up in three or four.

That pain down my leg? Not my IT band like I thought. Pinched sciatic nerve. Finally got on top of that after some sleepless nights and many, many sessions of PT.

And I haven't run since that day six or seven months ago. When I tried, my knee always hurt to some degree. I kept asking about when I could run again, ignoring wrinkled noses, suggestions of sticking with walking, or maybe if I got lucky possibly running on a cushioned track. I had been logging a thousand miles a year running in my neighborhood, and I didn't want to change.

I had an X-ray, then recently an MRI. I started asking questions about that MRI. Then wished I hadn't. Arthritis in all three compartments of the right knee. Moderately bad in two. More severe behind the knee cap. But, my doctor said, both knees looked the same in the X-ray (which was news to me, and not good news), so who knew? And he had seen people with bone-on-bone knees, the cartilage completely gone, who didn't feel pain.

I made the mistake of asking about my own knees in that regard. I'm only 55, so I figured the answer couldn't be bad. But it turns out I'm close to bone on bone. My PT and my doctor have talked of trekking poles and canes and even knee replacements. Only I barely heard them because I was mentally curled up in a fetal position. Down the line, I'm thinking, because it hardly hurts now.  I'm doing all the exercises, taking all the supplements someone has every suggested: turmeric, fish oil, ginger, Vitamin D, Move Free, tart cherry juice, and pectin dissolved in grape juice.

And I'm definitely not asking about Brazilian jiujitsu or kung fu. Because while I can substitute walking for running, I'm not interested in substituting tai chi for more active martial arts.

Working at home
I've been lucky enough to work at home since February 1, 2008. Before that I had worked in a cubicle or a shared office and written a book a year (while also parenting, cooking, exercising, housekeeping, and wife-ing. I learned that while you will be always be crappy at something, the trick is to rotate your area of crappiness). To a large degree, this was made possible by my husband bringing home a paycheck every two weeks and covering our health insurance.

Working at home is a real luxury, if at times a lonely one. I talk to myself a lot. If I feel really tired, I'll allow myself a short nap. My husband works llong hours, so he's usually gone from the house for over 12 hours at a time.

But Friday is his last day on the job. He's going to do freelance graphic design. Luckily, our kid is going to college in LA, so he can have an office and I can use her room as an office.  But what about talking to myself? Will he look down on me if I nap? Will we drive each other crazy?

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My kung fu school now offically offers Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Today I spent my lunch hour doing BJJ with one guy who weighs 225 and has a green belt in judo and our sifu, who weighs less but knows more.

So far, these have been my stages in doing BJJ:

• I don’t know what this guy is doing and it might hurt. Better tap.


• I know what this guy is doing and it hurts. Better tap.


• I know what this guy is doing and I try to get away. But he just cinches in tighter. I tap.


• I know what this guy is doing and I try to get away. But he gets me in a different position. I end up tapping.


• I know what this guy is doing but I have a game of my own. I try something. He gets away. He tries something. I get away. But eventually I can't escape, and I tap.


• Just like the above, only sometimes I get the other guy to tap!

As in kung fu, sometimes the best thing seems like the worst idea. Like getting closer to the guy holding the knife can be the best thing, or rolling toward the person who was just behind you choking you.

After class, Sifu asked me how many books I had written and how the process has changed over time. The answer was 17 published + 2 done but not yet published + 1 half-done + the 3 I wrote before I got published + the 3 I wrote after I got published but that never found a home.

That equals 26 books! Which explains why I can now write a book in a compressed timeline and without a super-clear idea of where it's going and still pull it off. So the more you write, the more you know about writing. And the more you grapple or do kung fu, the more you know about grappling or kung fu down in your marrow, deep down past thought. The more you trust the process.

Like in my current WIP, The Girl I Used to Be, I needed this character Jason to be a tweaked-out trucker.  And I could write him tweaked out and paranoid or I could write him talking to his ex-wife about who might have killed their old friends years ago, but I couldn't write both parts of the chapter. They refused to go together, even though it said in my outline that that should happen.  And I realized I had to listen to my characters. Like there was no way if Jason acted that crazy that Heather was going to give him the kids for the week, no matter what their custody agreement called for. Also, they wouldn't have discussed anything. They would have been at each other's throats. And once I trusted my gut and stopped thinking and stopped insisting the book had to follow my outline and just wrote, it worked itself out. Just like going into grappling and thinking I am going to do this one cool thing I want to do and missing plenty of opporutnities to other great things and never even doing your butterfuly choke.

Every day or at least every month, I'm getting to be better at kung fu/BJJ/writing.  But I don't think I'll ever be this good:

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Tao, the Little Samurai #1: Pranks and Attacks!

by Laurent Richard & Nicolas Ryser, illustrator

translated by Edward Gauvin

Graphic Universe      1/14/2014

978-1-4677-2095-3

Age 7 to 11       64 pages

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“Tao is studying martial arts at the famous Master Snow’s school. But no matter how hard he concentrates on his lessons, mischief gets in the way! Tai plays pranks and jokes around with his friends Ray, Lee, and Kat. He also struggles to get to school on time, learn new moves, and—most importantly—avoid doing his chores.”

Opening

“Ohboyohboy . . . this is gonna be tight. If I’m late, I’m gonna get chewed out! Hurry, hurry, hurry . . . home stretch . . .”

Review

Tao attends Master Snow’s martial arts school along with three friends, Ray, Lee, and his “not-girlfriend” Kat. Try as he might, Tao is late for school, and when there, has a hard time following Master Snow’s teachings. Each graphic novel page begins with a title, which is more like an oriental proverb. The second page is title “Showing off Can Spoil Dessert.” Tao is home and decides to practice annihilating blocks with a karate chop. He stacks three sets of two blocks to his right, left, and directly in front. Quickly, Tao chops with great force. “Bash! Bash! Bash!” Tao disintegrates every block, but his papa is unhappy with his son’s accomplishment—Tao used graham crackers as his cement blocks.

Kids, especially boys, will love Tao and his goofy ways. Tao tries but what he touches never goes right for him. I think reluctant readers will also like Tao. Rather than a 64-page story, there are 64 stories, one per page. Needing to stop is easy letting the reader–reluctant reader–go at their own pace, without becoming overwhelmed, or stressed. Remembering what happened is not necessary. If you don’t like the page where Tao is late for school, turn the page and a new situation will present itself. The stories have recurring characters that hang out with Tao, teach him, or guide him. So there is consistency in the Tai series.

The graphic novel is easy to following. The illustrations are bright and white lines mark each scene by placing them in boxes to divide the action. I found it was like reading a paragraph per block then moving on to the right for the next paragraph—only the blocks contained pictures not words. Some blocks do have a voice bubble with words, but those mostly set up or complete the joke on each page. Tao is completely for laughs and he succeeds. Needing help to put on his fencing outfit, not-my-girlfriend Kat helps and ties Tao up in bows—pretty pink bows—but Tao has no idea this is why his opponent is laughing.

A few pages I thought were especially good. Those included:

He Who Spies Gets a Black Eye

 He Who Cannot Fly Must Avoid Falling

 He Who Climbs Too Fast Falls Flat on His Face

The last involves Master Smith. Any page involving the Master is hilarious as he usually shows that age means nothing while performing some unusual human feat. After playing out all of the sage advice, the author takes readers “behind the scenes.” Here the author gives a short lesson on how Tao comes to life. The lesson includes writing voice bubbles, sketching characters and scenes, and colorizing the final images followed by black inking highlights so they stand out from the scene. The very last page lists the currently available editions of Tao. The color is light, almost like a transfer, which is what I thought it was. But, alas, it is not a transfer, so put those t-shirts away. Maybe next time.

Tao is a new graphic novel from Graphic Universe and rivals those published by Papercutz, the reigning king of graphic novels for kids. Tao is understandable and involves many situations most kids will face at some point in their life, karate not needed.

TAO THE LITTLE SAMURAI #1: PRANKS AND ATTACKS! Text copyright © 2011 by Laurent Richard. Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Nicolas Ryser. Translation copyright © 2014 by Edward Gauvin. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Graphic Universe, Minneapolis, MN.

Buy Tao the Little Samurai #1: Pranks and Attacks at Amazon—B&N—Lerner Publishing—your local bookstore.

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Learn more about the Tao the Little Samurai series HERE

Meet the author, Laurent Richard, at his website:   http://www.laurent-richard.com/

Meet the illustrator, Nicolas Ryser, at his website:

Meet the translator, Edward Gauvin, at his website:   http://www.edwardgauvin.com/

Find more graphic novels at Graphic Universe. blog:  http://graphicuniverse.wordpress.com/

Graphic Universe is an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group

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Also by Laurent Richard & Nicolas Ryser

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also by Edward Gauvin

 

 

 

Reviewed (#30) HERE.

 

 

Filed under: 4stars, Books for Boys, Children's Books, Graphic Novel, Library Donated Books, Middle Grade Tagged: children's book reviews, Edward Gauvin, graphic novel for kids, Graphic Universe, Laurent Richard, Lerner Publishing Group, martial arts, Nicolas Ryser, proverbs

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5 Stars Lego Ninjago Graphic Novels #4: Tomb of the Fangpyre Greg Farshtey Papercutz 64 Pages    Ages: 6+ ............... ....................... Tomb of the Fangpyre is book four in the Masters of Spinjitzu series. Four masters Jay, Cole, Zane, and Kai are lead by the Master Sensei Wu. They are in an ongoing battle with the [...]

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