just the b and that's it

Junie B. Jones is quickly becoming one of my favorite children's literature characters. She has a sophistication I doubt the 8-year-old I read her to actually understands. But boy do I have fun getting into character! Even the sentence structure, how part of her confidence is lost in all the extra words she uses, is perfection in my opinion. We've discussed before how children's literature is really just adults writing books for kids but this book feels like it's written for an older crowd anyway. I honestly don't understand what the girl I read it to gets out of it. I think she finds Junie's predicaments funny but doesn't catch most of the subtle humor. I'd never read one before I started reading them to her and we didn't get through the book in one session but I was so impressed with Junie B. Jones is a Party Animal that I sat there after our session was over and read the whole thing. I know these books run pretty much in the same vein as say, Eloise, but I like them so much better somehow. I think it's an interesting concept to create a book for older readers (read: upper primary/middle school) about a younger character. It's simple enough for younger readers to get through but challenging enough for older readers to want to read...I think. Plus, they're just dang funny.

year of impossible goodbyes

Wow. I'm so glad Sook Nyul Choi chose to tell her story. Not only because it's a piece of history that is largely marginalized in our classrooms, but because it fills in a gap that I think exists in most people. This gap I'm talking about is a result of the way social studies curriculum is set up. In my opinion at least. And it's one I didn't even know I had until I read this book. Usually, when we study history, even contemporary history as I believe this story would fall under, we study dates. We study political conflicts. We study the cold hard facts. This war went from this year to this year, it was a result of this and that, how did it affect the US or Europe? Ok done. This book changed that for me. And I don't mean 'oh, it put a human face on the conflict'. It did more than that. It, like, toyed with my concept of time. We say, oh Korea's been divided for this many years, after the Japanese left, this amount of time passed before Russia came. These are the transitions, here are the effects. And then it's generally over. We learn about the country but not about the people. And that's really what makes a country isn't it? We all get so offended when we here how the rest of the world generalizes the United States (especially recently), we say 'hey man, I am not my government' and so on. Some of us even go way the hell out of our way to disassociate ourselves with our political agenda. But when we talk about other countries, we tend to contradict ourselves. We say 'Japan did this' and 'Korea did that'. It's unsettling really. Choi's story gave me something to put into the empty spaces on the 'conflict' timeline. When we or anyone else were not involved. Those parts where we always assumed nothing was happening. But we learn from Sook Nyul Choi's story that, in fact, a lot of things happen in those spaces. I can definitely admit this wasn't the most entertaining book I've ever read. There were moments where her repetitive writing made me cringe (but there were also parts that made me so uncomfortable, I had to put it down for a while) and much of the dialogue was...unrealistic. It's not one I would read over again. But that's not it's purpose. When you tell someone about yourself, when you're telling your life's story, is it to entertain? Maybe sometimes. But really, the point is to make people understand you. Where you're coming from. Year of Impossible Goodbyes is no different. Choi didn't write an action flick, she wrote a partial autobiography. I understand that because it's a book, by nature it should be able to hold people's attention, but I think if you know what you should be expecting, this book totally does that. Yeah, I spent most of the book wondering what, if anything, was going to happen. And yes, that was frustrating. But that's how it was. No one knew. They especially didn't know many of the things we know now. The had no media. They didn't even have media to lie to them like we complain about. Word of mouth was literally...it. Think about it.