The Bear Went Over the Mountain

Today, I bought an 80 dollar pair of shoes.

Let me begin by saying that I didn't wake up planning to make such an irresponsible investment in footwear. I'm a college student, I'm Jewish, and I was raised to the sound of scissors slicing neatly through coupons. But after a very long and exhausting day at work (what! Being a childrens' librarian is tiring! You try spending 8 hours a day bursting with enthusiasm and Beverly Cleary recommendations), followed by hours attempting to complete a single errand, I decided I wanted to do something nice for myself. So I went to look, in person, at a pair of shoes I'd been ogling online. I truly hadn't meant to buy them, simply to drive 20 minutes out of my way to drool over them and then have the salesman pry them out of my hands.

Sometimes, the materialistic things get the better of us. I am what my grandmother would most likely call a “hippie.” I live to travel, love being outside, enjoy unruly curly hair and music from the 60's. And yet, here I sit, propped up in bed, wearing pigtails, an oversized Tool t-shirt, a pair of cotton boxer briefs, and 80 dollar high heels. Those shoes got the best of me. I simply couldn't put them down. The two sides of my brain were battling - human side, who longed for sparkle and pizzaz and the comfort of shoe shopping, and the animal side, who was scratching at my brain, reminding me of my incredibly low hourly wage and impending financial independence. The human side won.

This battle of human vs. animal thinking is the basis of William Kotzwinkle's odd little novel, The Bear Went Over the Mountain. I'll be honest, I picked this book up at the store because it had an adorable, confused looking bear on the cover, towering over the crowded streets of New York City. A giant, fuzzy beast squeezed into a suit, looking like he needed a hug. And when I read the reviews on the cover, I decided to buy it and give it a try. “The funniest fable of our time,” The Los Angeles Times raved. “...there isn't anyone funnier, smarter, or more inventive than he,” Richard Bausch wrote about the author.

The plot of The Bear most certainly did not disappoint. Arthur Bramhall, a professor at the University of Maine and struggling writer, has just lost his first attempt at a novel in a freak fire. He eventually builds himself a new cabin and a new book, and decides to hide it outside to avoid history repeating itself. Because anyone sane would leave a finished novel sitting under a tree (!), Bramhall sets his work down and meanders away. Before long, the novel is picked up by a bear, who somehow reads what he has discovered and hops a taxi to New York City. The novel is immediately published and takes America by storm, landing the bear an agent, publicist, and all sorts of other literary posse.

Over the course of the rest of the novel, the bear, who names himself Hal Jam (Jam because he simply loves jam; Hal because “Half” didn't sound human and a container of Half n' Half was the only thing around to inspire at the moment), discovers the pros and cons of life as a famous human. Inexplicably, when the bear dons a suit and a tie, no one in society can tell that he is a giant wildlife creature. Almost as confusingly, Hal can speak English, but barely. The story rolls forward comedically – Hal responds to questions from reporters and other authors with one word answers appropriately reflecting the thoughts of a bear attempting to be human - “Honey,” “Hot dog,” “I am a person” - and they take these as indisputable words of genius they are simply too stupid to understand. Hal climbs to the very top of the social ladder through aloof, bumbling, and erratic behavior that his group just assumes must mean he is a genius.

“'If you could sum up your impressions of urban life in a single word or two -'

'Cheesy things,' said the bear, lifting the empty bag in the hope of getting more.

'Do you mean that urban values are cheesy because everything's been commercialized? But that's how a civilized society works. Isn't it slighlty unfair of you to hold the mirror of rural life up to us and say, you must life like this? Modern city life is cheesy of necessity...'”

We see Hal undergo quite a metamorphosis. At the beginning, his thoughts are simple, the most complex problem in his life being how to steal his next pie. But when he enters the city and begins his life as a human being, Hal's priorities and though processes completely change. He discovers grocery stores, and realizes that he no longer has to work for his food. He starts to find himself attracted to the shapely curves and shaved legs of human women instead of the fuzzy female bears he once lusted after. Although many of his thoughts are still simple, he no longer thinks of the fields or streams that he used to love. The idea of going back into the Maine wilderness and losing all of the posh comforts of his new life is anything but appealing. Especially the thought of losing laundry service. When Hal meets the President of the United States, he makes it clear just how much he loves his clean clothes. “The president gave an almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction to the vice president. 'I change my underwear everyday,' said the bear, just to keep things friendly, at which point he was handed over to a staff member.”

As Hal is slowly morphing from a bear to a lazy and entitled member of society, Arthur Bramhall is losing himself in his misery and letting his animal instincts take over. After he discovers that his novel is missing, Bramhall tours around the small Maine town with an older neighbor, collecting a string of anecdotes about the wilderness. Throughout the process, Bramhall notices his sense of smell growing stronger, and thicker hair growing all over his body. He is suddenly attracted to large women that choose not to shave their legs. He has an unignorable urge to eat raw fish and sleep through winter in a cave.

We are taken back and forth between the journeys of these two men (Bears? Creatures? It is never really made clear, at the end, who is human and who is not...maybe that's the point) as they unfold. Kotzwinkle does a good job in juxtaposing the two plotlines against each other for maximum lesson-learning. I enjoyed the strange plot sequence and even the anti-materialistic message of the book, and I of course was thrilled by the behavior of the bear, trapped in a man's world, fighting the urge to pluck a swan off of his five-star hotel grounds and eat it raw in front of the other guests.

My main problem with the book was the writing. The diction, the language, call it what you will, the voice that the writer chooses for his narrator can make or break a story. Although we like to think that its artistry and creativity that gets a book published, sometimes its not so literary – if you can keep the reader entertained, you can sell. And Kotzwinkle didn't keep me entertained. Sections of the book were random, going off onto tangents and wandering aimlessly. The anecdotes Bramhall travels to collect, which take up a good portion of his plotline, never really connect or make sense to the reader. I'm still not sure why they were included, as they didn't seem to have anything to do with his character. They just seemed like a way to till pages. Much of the book was funny and lively, but there were sections that fell completely flat, especially against the standards the book's cover, summary, and jacket quotes had created. Most of my work days are long and exhausting, and when I get home I don't have the cognitive energy to dive into a story. But if the book is good, really good, I'll look forward to reading before bed. I'll stay up hours past my bedtime and act like a zombie through the next day just to finish a few chapters. The Bear Went Over the Mountain just didn't do this for me.

Also, why did Kotzwinkle choose to embrace fantasy in some aspects, but not in others? For example, the bear lives among humans – communicates with them, works with them, sleeps with them – and yet is never discovered. He can somehow speak English, and can read very well. Yet, Kotzwinkle doesn't go far enough as to let him communicate his thoughts effectively. The American people somehow believes that this man, who can barely string a sentence together, has written one of the highest grossing books in modern history (the devil on my shoulder is urging me to make a Stephanie Meyer joke here - the angel is forcing the end parenthesis). He manages to make it all 306 pages of the book without acting the least bit like a mentally well human being, in front of intense media, corporate, and even government scrutiny. But he doesn't receive a single question or warning. The entire book is full of odd inconsistencies of this sort. The tone is at some points like a nursery rhyme or a fairy tale, then suddenly reads more like a tawdry article in Penthouse. I couldn't put my finger on just what kind of book it was supposed to be, which kept me uneasy and distracted.

The Bear Went Over The Mountain had the opportunity to be a hilarious and heartwarming story of Disney/Pixar proportions. Think Mulan pretending to be a man when she joins the army to fight against the Huns – faking it until she makes it, fumbling her way through new and unfamiliar customs with bumbling and hilarious results. But instead it ended up somewhere between the studios of DreamWorks and Warner Bros.; quality animation, a promising plot, but missing the definite Disney je ne sais quoi.

Still, the message Kotzwinkle weaves between endearing bear moments is a good one. Getting lost in comfort and materialism can change a person (or a bear). Comfort can suck the love of adventure and thirst for life right out of you, leaving you instead with a fondness for Cheesy Things and hotel laundry service. We are constantly being bombarded with products designed to make life easier and more comfortable, and before long I fear that the only boundary stretching and exertion will be for criminals and professional athletes. I want my personal character to be somewhere between Hal Jam and Art Bramhall – to appreciate the comforts that a human life can offer, but still feel humbled by the power and beauty of what occurs naturally. It is difficult not to get distracted and obsessed with things that we can control and design. But no matter how much time we can save by using the same sheet in both the washer and the dryer, no engineered product can ever compete with miracles of nature that happen all around us. Let's not forget that.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain is a bit of a mixed bag. It is truly delightful to see into the mind of a bear, seemingly one of nature's simplest and most straightforward creatures, as he tries to grasp the complexities of high class life in New York City. Although Kotzwinkle isn't constantly on his A game, the when he's on, he is on. Tucked in between the tangents and random pornographic moments is some poignant and embarassing commentary about mankind, greed, and idolization of celebrities. If read carefully, the book can certainly mean something - or, it could just be a weird story about a bear. If you can will yourself to struggle through the portions of the book that are less than great, there are moments that are worth the effort; still, I'm not sure this is a book worth buying.

But who am I to give advice on purchases? I'm wearing what was supposed to be grocery money for the week on my feet.

PS – In case you were wondering:

Make a Splash - READ!

A summary of my experience at the Murrysville Community Library thus far, in photographs. A bajillion more pictures behind the jump. Let the kid in you frolic.

I'm Perfect, You're Doomed

I am a magnet for psychopaths. They flock to me like seagulls. Through my time in school and university I have befriended, dated, and worked with people with ADHD, OCD, depression, anxiety, tourettes. I've known bipolars, schizophrenics, dyslexics. Dabbled in claustrophobia, agoraphobia, thantaphobia. Perhaps this is why I am so drawn to memoirs – because the incredibly crazy people that write them remind me of home.

Still, I wasn't quite prepared for the monster lurking between the pages of Kyria Abraham's memoir, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing. There as little in life as confusing and mysterious to the everyday public school child than the classroom/school district's one or two families of Jehovah's Witnesses. Who are they? How are they always so neat? Why don't they say the pledge of allegiance, and what is so wrong with birthdays? I picked up the book hoping to learn a little more about the murky, enigmatic world of Jehovah's Witnesses. I got about ten times what I had bargained for. Along with a good amount of information about the religion came a life story just as entertaining as it is horrifying. No matter how many boyfriends you've had that can't sleep if their CD collection isn't in alphabetical order, you are not prepared for the insanity of Kyria Abraham's life.

Kyria Abrahams is a Jehovah's Witness. She is a Jehovah's Witness because she was born into a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, a community of Jehovah's Witnesses, a nation-wide connection of Jehovah's Witnesses. So, in short, she is a Jehovah's Witness because she was never given a choice; like the other kids in her community, she isn't even aware that any other type of life exists. However, this doesn't stop her from describing the early years of her life with ridiculous, laugh out loud, beautifully sharp humor. The first few chapters of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed had me reading out loud to whoever was in the room or on the other end of the phone, laughing too hard to finish some of my sentences. It was a riot to see a religion so notorious looked at through the eyes of a child. Kyria doesn't understand why her family finds birthdays evil, she just knows that if she happens to walk in on a birthday celebration, she will burst into flames. She lives in constant fear of the “worldy” people and things that lurk around the edges of her JW bubble – the kids at school, certain days of the year, even something as simple as a garage sale. “The best way to get possessed by Satan was to pull your car off to the side of the road, walk up a stranger's driveway, and buy something at his yard sale. The devil was lurking in eery creepy antique book and every doll with broken glass eyes. It seemed all evil spirits did in their spare time was hang out in people's cedar chests finding old photos and backward-masked tapes to jump into.” But instead of throwing a 27 chapter pity-party, Abrahams decides to grab her unconventional and unfortunate childhood by the throat and throttle it, much to my delight.

It seems a shame to write so little about the funny portion of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, because it really was fantastic. But this knee-smacking, tear-wiping humor only lasts until Kyria's memoir hits her teen years, barely more than a few chapters. At this point, the tone of the book begins to change. She starts exploring what every kid does when they start losing control of their hormones – rebellion, experimentation, irresponsible living. However, Kyria, perhaps because of her extremely sheltered and uptight upbringing, takes these ideas to a whole new level. Because pre-marital sex (pre-marital anything, really) is enough to get a Jehovah's Witness disfellowshipped, members of the religion tend to rush into marriage very young. Kyria's parents are a perfect example of this, and they live a miserable, dysfunctional life. Between this and the very conditional love that Kyria receives from her family and congregation, she doesn't understand real love or friendship; she exhausts herself trying to find attention and affection from anyone and everyone in the most blatantly backwards of ways.

What happened to the girl in the white dress, twirling and giggling through a childhood laden with fear and ridiculous requests? Somehow, before our very eyes, Kyria grew into a teenager schizophrenic with irrational fears and a craving for love so strong she can't even begin to understand it. What began as a lighthearted, lilting look into the life of a child in an unusual circumstance suddenly became a mix of horror novel and self-help book. Suddenly Kyria is binge drinking, cutting herself, dropping out of school, playing with fire in terms of sexual experiences. She is fighting to marry a boy she barely knows at seventeen to escape her parents house without garnering a mighty smiting from Jehovah. Because the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that whatever you are meant to have, Jehovah will provide, they are vehemently against higher education and “real” jobs. So, with no chance of future in front of her, what's stopping Kyria from laying in bed all day with a bottle of Apricot Brandy? Why shouldn't she marry Alan, a part time math teacher and fellow Jehovah's Witness, so she can know what sex feels like? She is barreling towards the ground already with no safety net – there's no reason not to do a few twists and turns on the way down.

The reader is forced to watch, silently, as Kyria falls farther and farther from grace. Every adult she knows is miserable, uneducated, and longing for a new life (or at least a divorce) – how is she supposed to know that any other type of life exists? And so she signs herself up for the JW Special – a hearty helping of dysfunctional marriage, financial issues, and complete monotony. With a side helping of 3 meetings per week at the neighborhood Kingdom Hall.

“I discovered that cutting myself had an interesting side effect – it momentarily distracted me from soul-crushing depression. The razor blade was a sneeze that jerks you awake after driving all night on the highway. I had a pressure inside me that needed to be released, needed to trickle out. Otherwise, the pain would be trapped in my body like a wounded cartoon character pushing down a bump on his head, only discover it popping out from its foot.”

As things get worse and worse, it feels like you're in the audience of a terror flick, standing and screaming at the young girl on the screen. Don't open the door! Don't go in there! Or in this case, its more like, Don't walk down that aisle! Put down that razor blade! Through the intimate anecdotes shared in the first half of the book, its hard not to feel an attachment to Kyria, the sweet, potential-laden young girl. So watching her drink and cut herself into submission before she can even legally buy her own liquor is downright painful. But then the book, which seems to house multiple personalities (Kyria is, self proclaimed, “completely insane”), takes yet another turn.

“During the ceremony, I burst into sobs so huge I couldn't even open my mouth to say 'I do.' […] One photo of me in front of the Kingdom Hall looks like I put on a bridal veil just to discover that someone had stabbed my hamster in the heart.

'You okay, K?' Dad asked, putting his dressed-up-father-of-the-bride arm around me. I knew I had to go inside and walk down an aisle and get married, but tears were uncontrollably streaming down my face. 'Are you having second thoughts about this wedding or something?'

'No, Daddy, I don't know why I'm crying,' I said. This was true. I really didn't know. This whole thing was so overwhelming, it was like asking your cat why it flipped out when you put it into a plastic carrier.”

There was never a doubt that Kyria's marriage would be DOA. After the wedding, the two young adults are stuck in an apartment together, finally having to get to know each other past boutonniere colors and favorite cake flavors. Alan, who is greasy, horny, and intensively passive aggressive, won't let Kyria work part-time. Although at first all of this free time away from home seemed ideal, watching “worldly” television and daytime drinking eventually lost its appeal. And so what little glue there was holding Kyria's life together starts to unravel - desperate to escape the underage marriage she never should have requested, she begins on a series of conquests to try to convince her asshole of a husband to let her have a divorce. There's cheating, screaming, fighting, suicide attempts. Kyria fornicates her way through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New England with a series of cringe-worthy losers, right on par with the guy she married in the first place. But she's finally doing what she should have had the chance to do much earlier – experiencing growth and loss, experimenting with her ability to make mistakes and suffer the repercussions. And with these new feelings she is beginning to understand exactly why she was always forbidden to have them; they allow her to question and doubt the life she has always known.

“Jehovah was supposed to be loving and forgiving. The point of being a Christian was that no matter how you sinned against God, there was always a way back. Thievery? Murder? Stabbing a baby with a chopstick, then spinning it acrobatically between two plates? Just say you're sorry, really mean it, and God's gotta give ou a second chance. If Jehovah could forgive a thieving,m raping, baby spinner, why should it even be a sin for a teenager to want a divorce?”

Watching Kyria fall is like seeing a bird being hunted. When you're on the ground and the bird is in the sky, it looks like an angel – but once it falls and lands at your feet, you see that its just a tangled mess of feathers, just as mortal and delicate as the rest of us. By the end of the book, Kyria is little more than a rumpled mass of feathers at your feet.

Kyria Abrahams recorded the most humiliating, heinous moments of her life for a solid purpose. Once the final page was turned, it was impossible for me to not take a careful look at my religion, my faith, and my upbringing, and study the role that they play in my present life. Am I living a certain way because it was handed to me or shoved down my throat, or because its what I truly believe and want? Am I on the correct path, or am I simply continuing for fear of having to backtrack and wander? Kyria bears her soul to the reader, as confused and unclean as it may be, and causes the reader to take a look at their own in response. In some ways, these are the best types of books – the ones that make you stop and reconsider your very existence, to study the verbs that together narrate your life.

At its brightest, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed is an idiosyncratic memoir laced with humor, a tinge of sadness, and the terrifying truth of what can happen when religious beliefs overcome practicality and the natural instinct to survive. At its darkest, the book is an uncomfortable, heart wrenching string of moments linked by disorders and compulsions; a car accident you simply must study as you pass. Either way, its intelligently written and jumps directly off of the page, running around your mind spouting Bible verses and apocalyptic warnings.

“'Jehovah,' I said. 'I'm sorry. Look, its nothing against you or the Jehovah's Witnesses, all this disfellowshipping. I don't want to die at Armageddon and I don't want to sin against you. But I hope you'll understand […] there's no other way out.'

A pine tree might have moved. I stared into it like God had a tree house in there and was just biding his time, waiting for me to throw a handful of marbles.

'If you really exist, and if Jehovah's Witnesses are really the one, true religion, God, please give me a sign. If you'll give me a sign, I promise I'll repent, I'll stay married, I'll come back to the organization, I'll sit in the back of the Kingdom Hall, I'll be a Jehovah's Witness forever. I promise, God. I'm not trying to be a bad person. I just don't know what to do. Please, Jehovah, just tell me what to do.'

The pine tree did what pine trees do. It stood in one place.”

How Did You Get This Number?

Sloane Crosley, author of the quirky collection of essays I Was Told There'd be Cake (a few entries down, for newcomers) will be releasing her new book, How Did You Get This Number? on June 15th. Here's to hoping it will be just as hilarious as the first!

You can pre-order your hardback copy here.

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

This Wednesday, I began my summer job at the Murrysville Community Library as the assistant to the childrens' librarian. This is the first step along my path to obtain my MLIS and hopefully someday run a childrens' library program of my own, whether in a public library or a school system. It has been a difficult and exhausting week of glittering, doodling, and laughing. We have hour long, serious discussions on life-or-death issues like Dr. Seuss and The Berenstain Bears. In short, I have found the place that I belong.

In celebration, I have decided to dedicate today's review to the beautiful experience that is discovering books in childhood. Choosing which book to review was probably the most difficult part of the process – I was the kid with the huge glasses toting four books around with me at once, just in case I finished three and wanted to start another (I am, of course, still that kid. But I'm a bit taller now, and I have a boyfriend to carry my books for me). I loved anything by Roald Dahl, Mrs. Pigglewiggle's stories, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. But there was one book that I read through over and over again. And that, my friends, was The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. The book is written by Julie Andrews, who has me convinced that Mary Poppins was an official biography.

The plot line is one that we've seen a million times throughout childrens' literature and media. We troublesome humans, with our endless noise, pollution, and fondness for proving things with science and technology, have driven some of the world's most magical creatures into hiding. An odd sort of hiding – into a 'parallel universe' that is a mix between Wonderland, Narnia, and the Wonka Chocolate Factory. The sky is red, the golden river sings when you skip a stone, and the flowers smell of freshly baked bread. The world is described as “a place for living things,” and the ideas of peace and harmony reign supreme. Whangdoodleland is inhabited by creatures like Tree Squeaks, Sidewinders, the High-Behind Splintercat (exactly as it sounds), and the ever-loyal Whiffle Bird. And the creature in charge this world, who keeps order and rules as King, is the Whangdoodle – not just any Whangdoodle, but the last Whangdoodle of all. He lives, lonely and slightly miserable, in his palace looking over Whangdoodleland. He and his kingdom do all that they can to avoid contact with mankind.

That is, until our journey begins. Lindy, Ben, and Tom Potter, the siblings at the heart of the story, are able to travel to Whangdoodleland (their only vehicle for the journey being their imaginations) with the help of Professor Savant. Professor Savant is a Nobel Prize winning scientist (the book has an unusual center around science and technology that I never really noticed as a kid) who also happens to have an imagination keen enough to get him to Whangdoodleland. However, he has never been able to make it to the palace. And so he enlists the Potter children to help him travel, to meet the Whangdoodle, and to carry out his lifelong plans. In hopes that you will all kick-start your imaginations and pick up the book, I will leave you is suspense as to what those goals entail.

There are clearly some odd bits to this story. First of all, the children meet the Professor one rainy afternoon at the zoo, and soon become alarmingly attached and involved with the stranger. They spend every afternoon, and, eventually, a period of a few days alone in the man's giant mansion, and their parents never seem very concerned. The Professor explains the rules of traveling to Whangdoodleland to them as follows: “You would have to do exactly as I say. More importantly, you would never be able to mention this to another living soul.” I can't help but picture this as part of a confession from a child molester featured on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

Ignoring the blaring signs pointing to pedophilia, the book is a bubbling, delicious trip through a magical world. Each page uncovers more unique creatures and situations for the group to encounter. And although the reader can take many from its pages, Andrews' mission is not just to teach a lesson – it is to get the reader to truly use their imagination. Each of the aforementioned creatures and situations is described colorfully but vaguely, leaving the reader to create a delightful mental picture all their own. The colors are labelled with images easily recognized by younger minds (“shell pink flowers” and “pearl-white and crimson orchids”), and the fantastical creatures are described with base points of animals children might recognize, and then tweaked to become something much more unique. For example, the Whangdoodle is described as “looking rather like a moose, with short legs and fantastic horns.” But then we are told that he changes colors with his moods, and grows a different pair of bedroom slippers on his feet every year, shortly after shedding the last pair. Now each reader has a different picture in their mind – surely your mental Whangdoodle isn't as marvelous as mine – and we are all actively using our imaginations and giving the book our full attention, television and video games be damned. This is what wonderful childrens' writing is capable of. And to put the icing on the cake, Andrews continues to reveal enchanting details and personality traits of the Whangdoodle as the book continues. If you're curious, he is a very shy fellow, and has an extreme sweet tooth – a literal tooth that is just darling, marked in his mouth with a daisy.

The writing itself in Whangdoodles isn't exactly award-winning. The dialogue is decidedly British, which is to be expected as Julie Andrews is perhaps one of the most eloquent British women on the planet. There is a huge number of adjectives and the description can sometimes be overwhelming, but it can be argued that this is necessary when the author is trying to create an entirely new world for the reader. As an “adult” (I use the term loosely) re-reading the book, the wording is hyperbolic and sometimes seems to chase itself around in circles. But despite 15 or so years going by since I first read it through, the story has lost none of its magic for me. I am still as drawn in as I ever was, biting my nails and on the edge of my seat as Lindy tries to escape the seductive clutches of the High-Behind Splintercat, and laughing out loud as he accidentally jumps over her and lands in a field of catnip. “His head popped up with one of the blossoms clamped idiotically between his teeth. There was an intoxicated, happy grin on his face and he began to leap about as if dizzy and delirious. 'Ssssstop. Ssssstop it, I like it!' He rolled on his back, kicking his legs in the air.”

Much of the writing for children and young adults will spend pages after pages agonizing over one redundant lesson. Clean your room, for 64 pages. Listen to your parents, for 113 pages. I think that this is because writers and editors don't believe that children are smart enough to absorb more than one main thought from a single book. As a student in my 5^th year of school for education and a twenty-something with plenty of hands-on babysitting and teaching experience, I adamantly disagree. Children are far smarter than the higher-ups give them credit for. They, especially the voracious readers that would really get the most out of books like Whangdoodles, have an incredible capacity for learning through reading and imagination. Andrews made the decision to trust that her readers would take the time to consider the topics discussed, the situations faced, and the mistakes made by the Potters and the Professor. Because of this approach, from less than 300 pages of large-print text a child can learn about the importance of imagination, obeying elders and parents, loyalty, science, technology, and the proper limitations to both, respect for wildlife and the planet, manners, self esteem, and the science behind cloning (!), just to name a few.

There is another reason that I am in awe of Julie Andrews. In the over 30 years since The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles has been a children's favorite, there have been multiple offers to release an illustrated version of the story, a line of dolls and toys, even movie bids. And despite the opportuinty for franchising and royalties, Andrews refuses. In the forward found on the 30^th anniversary edition of the book, she says, “The tale is about using one's imagination (and discovering what is under one's very nose), and I hoped that readers would discover the Whangdoodle for themselves – just as I had – so I decided not to. I am so glad I made that choice...” In a time where technology has taken the place of the babysitter, this loyalty to imagination, wonder, and even the importance of thought is enough to make me want to buy 14 copies of the book just to show my support. Julie Andrews gets quite a bit of the credit (or blame, depending on how you look at it) for my rampant imagination, and all of the wonderful effects it has had my life.

I suggest that you all take a few hours out of your day-to-day lives to travel back to your childhoods. Pick up Whangdoodles, or any book that you loved as a kid – one that really had you itching to explore, question, and achieve – dust off your imagination, and take the journey all over again.

“My point is this: I don't want you ever again to take something at face value – to take things for granted. Let you curiosity run away with you. Know that beyond every ordinary explanation there is a deeper and more exciting discovery to be made.”

The Weight of Water

Sometimes, when the everyday happenings of your personal life become a bit too exhausting, you just want to worry about someone else's problems. This is a common belief in the age of reality TV – why worry about my issues when I can worry about yours? I'll admit, I buy into it; but in a slightly less pathetic way than most my age. Yes, I should be packing or cleaning or applying to grad school. But how can I do that when I don't know how chapter six ends? Or what that word means? Or what that metaphor stands for exactly?

When looking for an escape, there is hardly anything better than what I call a “junk food read.” There are plenty of choices for slumming – pardon my English major ego here – depending on how far deep into the depths you're looking to go. If you'd like to be able to keep your prim and proper little nose in the air, you can check out the heavy hitters on the New York Times Best Seller list. There, you'll be likely to find an entertaining read that's still high quality. If you feel like putting on a floppy hat and a pair of huge sunglasses and taking the bus to a bookstore the next town over, you can pick up some Danielle Steele. There, you'll be likely to be swept up by the stable boy for a night of passion in the apple orchard. I settled somewhere in between and went for an author I knew would hand me an easy, interesting story with some predictable romantic drama and a little bit of a twist – Anita Shreve, author of the massive hit, The Pilot's Wife.

The Weight of Water (actually written before The Pilot's Wife) tells the story of Jean, a middle aged wife of a semi-successful poet and mother of nine year old daughter, Billie. Jean works as a photographer for The Boston Post, and the book finds her on assignment in the Isle of Shoals, a group of islands about ten miles away from the coasts of New Hampshire and Maine. Jean's husband, Thomas, has gained some minor success for his work – a few awards, a teaching position at Cambridge – but struggles in the way that many artists do. A series of his poems seems to have been well received, but we never learn much about them. At one point it is mentioned that Thomas, a quiet, dark, and obviously tortured soul (how else are poets ever depicted in fiction?) based these works off of an accident that occurred when he was a young man, in which he lost his first love. But the subject is touched upon so briefly and explained so poorly that it doesn't really justify any of his actions. We know nothing of his work, his past, or even much of Jean and Thomas' life together. Everything about their characters seems cliché and underdeveloped. The one thing we know for sure? Their marriage sucks. Oh, and that Thomas deals with his mediocre success through drinking, further alienating himself from his wife, who he barely seems to notice in the first place.

Trapped somewhere in the middle of this is the couple's daughter, Billie. Billie is outlined as a very typical, completely unremarkable nine year old girl. I pitied her throughout the novel, stuck on a houseboat for such a long trip, constantly being tossed back and forth between her parent's painfully awkward and rickety relationship. But Shreve sort of lets Billie slip through the literary cracks. For chunks of time, I flat out forget that the little girl is a character in the novel, so dense and brow-furrowing is the drama between her parents and their travel-guests.

There are two major subplots weaving in and around each other throughout Water. The first is present day. It travels along with Jean and her family as she tours the Isle of Shoals, photographing the location of a historical murder. In order to make the trip, they have agreed to travel with Thomas' brother, Rich, on his houseboat. Of course, a drama-mystery wouldn't be a true drama-mystery without a young and distracting woman! Enter Rich's girlfriend Adeline, a 25 year old goddess with lithe limbs, flawless locks, and an insatiable thirst for poetry. She is, of course, the complete opposite of Jean, an avid fan of Thomas' work, and seems to always be inexplicably clothed in only a bathing suit. Raise your hand if you already know where this is going.

The second plot takes place back in the late 1800's, outlining the historical event to which Jean has been assigned. In March of 1895 two women were brutally murdered on Smuttynose Island while a third survived; we follow along as their husbands return late that night to find the two women butchered and the third covered in blood. We make our way through this plot in uneven spurts that include sections of Maren Hontvedt (the survivor)'s personal journals, accounts from the murder trial, and facts tossed randomly in with the modern-day plot.

Because of the disjointed, uneven matter in which the plots are developed, I never really felt like I truly understood either of them. Just when I seemed to be getting a grip on the tension between Thomas and Jean, I was wrenched from the house boat and plopped back into the antique world of Maren and her uncomfortable relationship with her housemates. Then, I would finally ease into 1895 and begin to take an interest in the unending wind and rain off the coast of Maine, suddenly to find myself back in the 21^st century. I can only assume that the time traveling was meant to more deeply involve the reader, perhaps to keep them on their toes. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect on me – with each switch I felt more distanced from the story. Towards the end I was skipping around the novel from one section to the next so that I could attempt to read each plot uninterrupted, even if it meant missing some emotional or historical significance.

I know that there is supposed to be a connection between the murders that took place on Smuttynose and the relationships that are simultaneously forming and falling apart over a century later. Otherwise, why would Shreve be flipping the reader back and forth like a ping pong ball? But, try as I might, I still can't put my finger on it. It almost felt as if two books had been spliced and printed together on accident. Perhaps the two plots are linked through the brother characters – Maren has an inappropriate, confusing relationship with her brother Evan, while Jean is “accidentally” forming a romantic relationship with her husband's brother, Rich. But that seems like a stretch. The only thing those two sentences really have in common are the word “brother”. And, again, the plots are so frustratingly underdeveloped that I'm not sure I would catch the connection if it was being dangled in front of my nose.

From the very beginning, the author is heavy handed with the foreshadowing. Blaring, unignorable signs of an affair between Thomas and Adeline and thrown clumsily through the plot, and it begins to feel at some points like the author is beating you on the head. They're all trapped on a boat. There's sexual tension. We get it. Perhaps this overdose of awkwardness would make sense if the subplot ever lead to anything – but none of them ever do. Normally when a novel is chugging along, leaving you in the dark, it all comes together in the end. Unfortunately, The Weight of Water didn't even have the redeeming quality of a sturdy ending. It is, instead, a sudden plot twist that adds little to the storyline or the characters. It felt like a cheap move on Shreve's part, like she was trying to trick the reader into forgetting the first sub-par 200 pages.

What's even worse than the failed attempt at a Palahniuk-twist ending? Tacking on a final chapter that “casually” attempts to answer any lingering questions the reader might have. That was just embarrassing. I feel no need to mock it because I believe it successfully mocks itself.

Believe it or not, there were a few things about the book that I did enjoy. It went by quickly, if unremarkably. The writing itself was interesting and had a good pace. The murders Jean is researching really happened (although who knows if her telling of them is true), and I always like a good dose of history. The little of Thomas and Jean's relationship past that we see is a solid example of a couple getting married for the wrong reasons and living with the mistake for the rest of their lives, which is always intriguing. “I was always worried that you thought I was with you because of the poems. That I was using you. As a kind of muse,” Thomas says to Jean somewhere in a flashback scene. “Not now, Thomas.” She answers. And in some moments, Jean's jealousy of Adeline is relateable, her quips snippy and entertaining. I hope to never be trapped on a houseboat with a woman twenty years younger than me, who is drooling over my husband. But in case I am, I now have a standard of cleverness to live up to.

Another interesting thing about The Weight of Water is its portrayal of the modern-day photographer. Have you ever considered what it would like to be a photographer professionally, outside of weddings and Bar Mitzvahs? The life of a newspaper photographer is one we seldom delve into. Sure, there are the stories that just require a point and shoot, but through Jean we learn about the emotional, passionate sides of photography that aren't often seen. For me, it is sometimes easy to forget that photography is art. I mean that in the kindest of ways; I understand the importance of finding the correct light, color, angle, subject... I love photography and respect what little I know of it, but my knowledge of art isn't exactly extensive, and I generally picture a paintbrush or a collection of stick figures. Photography for me seems almost more mathematical, scientific even, than artistic. But following Jean's thought process as she attempts to capture a soul within a still frame is fascinating. The thought itself isn't new, but it is truly interesting to see it in juxtaposition with the loss of soul associated with murder.

“In Africa, when I was on assignment there, some Masai whom I met thought that if I took a photograph of them, and if I went away with that photograph, I would have stolen their soul. I have sometimes wondered if this can be done with a place... That soul is, of course, composed of the stories we have attached to a particular piece of geography, as well as of the cumulative moments of those who have lived on and visited [Smuttynose Island]. And I believe the soul of Smuttynose is also to be found in its rock and tufted vetch, its beggar's-ticks and pilewort, its cinquefoil brought from Norway. It lives as well in the petrels that float on the air and the skate that beach themselves – white and slimy and bloated – on the island's dark beach...”

Despite these few high points, The Weight of Water just didn't do it for me. It wasn't even as good as The Pilot's Wife, which itself wasn't anything fantastic (I actually think I left it in a New Zealand hostel last summer and filled its place in my hiking pack with Nutella sandwiches). If you're looking for a good “junk food read,” I would pass this one up. Unless you're somehow reading this from your houseboat floating around New Hampshire, you're better off with reality TV. And if you are floating around the Isle of Shoals, then you should probably go check on your daughter. (Spoiler alert. Whoops.)

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

I've heard it said that there is a voice of every generation. A single being so influential and wise that their words go down in history as a representative of the people of that time – of their thoughts, their dreams, their emotions and aspirations. This got me thinking – at 23 years old, who would the voice of my generation be? Lady GaGa? (Do “ra-ra” and “roma” really count as words?) Lindsay Lohan? The kids from Jersey Shore? That guy who writes The Superficial? As hilarious as he is, the word “breasts” is used far too often for my historical taste.

And so, with a stunning lack of impressive options, I nominate Sloane Crosley; author of I Was Told There'd Be Cake, a collection I personally believe should be required reading for college students.

There is something about Sloane Crosley that is endearing. Infallibly, almost annoyingly so. It's not that she's a perfect, stellar heroine. In fact, she's far from it. Sloane Crosley is....well....she's a bad person.

She's a bad person in the way that we all are. She is the little demon inside of us that laughs when people trip over cracks in the sidewalk or drop an armful of papers into an unforgiving wind. She is the same kind of bad person that I was with my first independently owned pet and the feline love of my life. I would watch Milo, my wonderfully loving but also mentally retarded cat, play on the edge of the bathtub. I knew he would fall in, and I knew that if I were to just stop him and set him back on the floor, I would save him all sorts of anguish. But at the same time, there was an orange fluffball with horrific balance teetering just inches from a pool of water. I loved the cat desperately. I really did. But damn it, I wanted to see him fall, even if it meant him dripping all over my bedspread.

In that way, there is a little bit of Sloane in each of us.

The book is a collection of “essays” (short stories? Autobiographical snippets? Vignettes? Take your pick, really) that cover a wide range of topics centered around Sloane's life in suburban New York. She is, on one hand, a spoiled, bratty JAP (I can say this, of course, because I'm Jewish myself), playing with her mother's jewelery and wishing she had long blond hair like all of her school friends. If you've never been a young Jewish kid in a mainly WASP environment, you cannot truly understand the lament of your “Jew-fro” snapping through combs as your mother yells yiddish words up towards the God hiding somewhere beyond the ceiling fan. On the other hand, Sloane is trying her best to be a good person (without going out of her comfort zone, of course), a good employee, a good friend. We see the common themes of maturation, loss of innocence, a widening of the childhood “bubble” through real-life experiences. So what makes Cake different?

Simply put? Everything. I went in expecting the worst. The first essay, titled simply The Pony Problem, had visions of a wealthy upper-crust equestrian middle schooler dancing through my head. That is to say, I began expecting to dislike Sloane. To loathe her, really.

“I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day.”

And there it was. Suddenly Sloane was off her high horse (the horse, of course, being both metaphorical and literal). She was suddenly just another girl raised in an upper-middle class suburban neighborhood by a loving, simultaneously overprotective and still aloof, religiously confused set of parents. She was struggling to be on her own, overwhelmed by the city, surprisingly unprepared to deal with the consequences of paying ones own grocery bills. We were sitting on my floor, eating ice cream from the carton, discussing our obsessive compulsive fears.

“Say someone pushes me onto the subway tracks. Or I get accidentally blown up. Or a woman with a headset and a baby carriage wheels over my big toe, backing me into some scaffolding, which shakes loose a lead pipe, which lands on my head. What then? After the ambulance, the hospital, the funeral, the trays of cheese cubes on foil toothpicks...”

From then on it was clear that Sloane Crosley and I were going to get along just fine. The Pony Problem goes on to explain that this fear of untimely death has brought our narrator to dump an incriminating bag of plastic ponies on the city subway, in fear that a surviving relative will uncover the dirty secret. In her mind, Mama Crosley will be cleaning out the kitchen, crying quietly, when she will discover the drawer of stashed horses. The revelation will be so odd and discomforting for the grieving mother that she will promptly forget all of the wonderful things about her daughter and remember her as a plastic pony loving freak. So, obviously, the ponies had to be disposed of.

“I think about burying them in the park but have my doubts about the ponies' biodegradability. I think about burning them, melting them into a puddle of plastic as their real-life counterparts were once melted into glue. Maybe I'll just sneak out to the reservoir after dark with a raft made from pool noodles and rubber bands and give them a Viking funeral.”

Through a series of fifteen short essays (ranging from about six pages to about twenty) Sloane brings us with her through some of the most entertaining, humiliating, and eye-opening moments of her adolescence. These are places most of us have been – the first time we learn what sex really is, the first time we realize we're truly “different”, that day we accidentally locked ourselves out of our apartment...twice. Most of the time I found myself thinking, What a hilarious and creative situation! Then I sat and thought about it some more, and realized... wait. That's happened to me before. Why didn't it seem so charming firsthand?

In fact, my main complaint about I Was Told There'd be Cake was that it made me feel like a rather boring and uncreative person. Why isn't my life narrated in witty, snippy quips and paragraphs? The book is flat out funny. The collection reads the way we all wish our diaries did. It makes the drama and the confusion of growing up clear – the exploration of feelings and experiences, the moment each cloud disintegrates and you get just a little bit closer to the ground,losing your halo along the way – but makes it extremely entertaining. Finally, a way to laugh at someone else suffering those same miserable rites of passage without feeling guilty!

Sloane's essays are like a big helping of fast food. It's so good while you're reading it that you hardly slow down to think of what the consequences will be. Thankfully, the repercussions of Cake aren't as bad as those of a McDonalds value meal. Between its jokes, the book includes some creative, warm thoughts on life, love, and growing up.

“Go to college, pick a major, get a boyfriend, a job, an interesting scar, a dream house, an educated position on the death penalty. Suddenly you [have] more mail, more keys, more passwords, more toiletries. And all for less praise. People are less quick to applaud as you grow older. Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there. If you think about it, it's a miracle that we get out of bed every day and brush our teeth and remember to buy toothpaste. We all deserve to be congratulated but sadly that would mean there's no one else to do the congratulating.”

Don't worry, the scale of humor versus lesson tips heavily in the favor of comedy. In You on a Stick, Sloane is asked by a distant high school friend to be a member of her bridal party. A single 26 year old girl, living alone in the city, forced to help out at a wedding, desperately drunk and lonely – here is a snapshot we are shown again and again. Now turn the picture upside down, squint your eyes a little, and dim the lights. That is more of the snapshot that we get.

“One day I woke up in my midtwenties and boom: I was attending [a wedding] every three months. It was an epidemic and I was invited. […] I was a duck-billed platypus, begging Noah to let me on the ark, but he refused because my other duck-billed platypus was riding the baggage claim carousel at the foot of the dock. […] If I had any remote inclination toward marriage – not an unhealthy Bridget Jones fascination, but the fundamental idea of someday finding my other duck-billed platypus and maybe buying a magazine for duck-billed platypuses – this would have been cruel.”

You will notice that there is a word I use often on this blog as a sort of ultimate reward for authors. Refreshing. It defined the poetry of Theresa Williams' novel, the romance between Corelli and Pelagia, the passion Peekay felt for boxing. And it runs rampant in I Was Told There'd be Cake. Every page is fresh, funny, and completely out of left field. Where else can you spend a solid eight pages playing private detective to solve the mystery of who left a “perfect, cherry-sized turd on your bathroom carpet?” Learn about the dark sides of butterflies and volunteering? Correctly deduce if you are crazy for your private thoughts about sex, “dream[s] there [is] no harm in believing (provided one kept their wits and prophylactics about them)?”

Sloane is young and creative, and doesn't mind raising a few eyebrows with her essays. She's not afraid to offend, and she's doesn't seem terribly concerned about people knowing she went actively searching for a one night stand, or that she's not a “hard-core” vegetarian (“As a lifestyle once kept between a select few and that now has many coming out of the freezer, being a vegetarian in New York is not unlike being gay”). I have found that when the writer isn't afraid to put him or herself up on the chopping block, it takes the book to a whole new level. In my opinion, if you want to write something great, you can't be too embarrassed to admit that you once baked and decorated a cookie in the likeness of your boss' head, somehow convinced that that would finally get you into her good graces (yes, that happened... check page 43).

Sloane is the girl that we all want to be. She is confident, unashamed, hilarious, a thought-provoking mixture of optimistic and pessimistic. She is willing and able to admit her flaws, but can tell you just as fast why she is utterly fantastic. She loves her family and they love her back, but from a respectful (perhaps cautious?) distance. Her boyfriends love her enough to buy her plastic ponies – thus causing The Pony Problem – but she is so independent and happy on her own that her parents think she is a lesbian. She is sharp, hard working, and can spin a pun so wicked that you'll be dizzy for pages.

Isn't that the kind of voice you would want representing your generation?

“Because this is the beauty of strangers: we're all just doing our best to help each other out, motivated not be karma but by a natural instinct to aid the greater whole, one stray clothing tag at a time. Except for the curmudgeonly guy on the corner of Thirteenth and Seventh who saw me smoking a cigarette and told me it would kill me. Asshole.”