Just Right Jillian, a book review

 Just Right Jillian is a beautiful book for younger middle grade readers. Jillian is in 5th grade, extremely shy and uncertain. She mourns the loss of her beloved grandmother, but she also draws on memories of her words, wisdom and lessons to give her strength and courage. It's  wonderful story of becoming who we are, rather than submitting to the wishes of others.

As a librarian I search for stories that can help my students see themselves within a story. Jillian comes from a strong, loving family, and her school life is filled with normalcy - students struggling to find their place academically, socially, and within themselves. When it is published, this book may be labeled as diverse reading for school collections, but really, that is a label I hope one day we can not look for, or feel the need to divide books into. Children want to see themselves in stories they read, and Just Right Jillian is about so much more. Diverse does not mean just about skin color, it can mean anyone who is different from peers or what society deems as acceptable. In this story, Jillian is black, and the majority of her schoolmates are black; she makes it a point to note that Jake, in her class, is one of a small group of white students, and he is well accepted (he is tall, too!). But this book is not about Jillian's skin color. Her place in the world with her parents is secure and accepting. She suffers from wanting to fit in, but also wanting to stand out and be herself. By unwritten agreement, all the fifth grade girls wear the same types of clothes and the same hair-do's on different days of the week. It makes Jillian feel invisible, and that is the true diversity of this book - trying to fit into a place where she is not entirely comfortable; wanting to conform, yet still be herself. It is about bravery and taking changes and taking a stand for oneself. But it is also about friendships, and what it means to be a true, accepting friend. 

This is a truly wonderful book, and I am going to be so honored to add it to my library collection when it is published. 

Hidden Blessings

                                                                                   

A long time ago I received a promotion from Barnes and Noble. I was in management, and they actually created a brand new pilot job for me - but it was at a different store. I had to leave "home", and that was a challenge. My life had been so tumultuous with the loss of my marriage and my mother. Lakeland was home, and I was comfortable. But I had to make a decision for the future, and I was starting back to college for my masters degree; it made more sense to accept the promotion and the change. Leaving was hard and very fast - I was offered the job on Monday, and Wednesday was my last day at "home". Going forward, each day I would drive to the new store, sad at the loss of my friends and family at “home"....and I would try to fit in to an established team, a new-to-me store, a brand new position not everyone knew, understood or agreed with. There were people at the new store who made things nice for me - but overall, it was a hard, hard transition because of that time of life. Life gives us what we need, whether we like or not, and it turns out that was also the year the movie/book/audio book, The Secret came out. That changed my life. It became my go-to resource. I would listen to parts of it on my drive; I watched the movie as often as I could; the physical book stayed by my bedside. It has stayed an essential part of who I am and how I live my life; believing in the power of the law of attraction. What we give out comes back to us, whether it be good or bad. 

That job creation from Barnes & Noble changed the trajectory of my life, and the hardship I encountered during that whole time of my life paved the path to so many beautiful, good things. Barnes & Noble helped me pay for library school, a fact which I will always be grateful for. Through that position I worked more closely with other booksellers from Tampa stores - which directly led to my first librarian job at a private school I had long heard of but never dreamed I would work at. My Children's Manager position also eventually led me to my position now - through connections made at that challenging time of life, and working with media specialists in Hillsborough County Public Schools. I was so grateful to Barnes & Noble that even after I became a librarian, I stayed part-time at yet another store just a few blocks away from my school for the six years I was a librarian there. It is in my blood, and I miss working there a great deal; they helped me find my life again.

I see that happening in our world now; good coming from not-so-great. It is so hard, these times we are in. There were times in the past that I thought oh gosh - I do not know how to move forward; I cannot breathe, I cannot stand this. But I have learned from my past challenges. Staying strong and positive will help us get through - and we will look back and say, ah - that is the lesson I was meant to learn. Because truly, life is good when we look for the good. What we give out comes back to us - we have to be sure we live positive lives.

                                                               

Another Day Dawns

The day steadily arises,
silvery, quiet
morning creeping in.
Misty strands of night
hang in the air,
thick heaviness,
of humidity hovering,
covering my shoulders.
There's a yellow greenness;
a quality in the rising light -
blue trying to overcome the blanket of night.
Gray, green moss
hangs from the fingers
of trees,
swaying gently in an unseen breeze.
Another day arrives
with a whisper.

Thoughts on Becoming

I am inspired by gray, cloud-filled, windy, rainy days. I am persuaded to write, to read – just to be. Today is not one of those days, but I am still energized to be fresh, awake – alive. As I sit here on my porch, I take in the morning. I woke early, as I always do, but today I laid in bed and read for a while. I felt delicious and decadent, and I rolled over, desiring to sleep, believing I wouldn’t, and I did not. Jimi-kitty does not like me lying in bed; I am not sure why, but he meows and seems agitated on mornings I think I want to lie in. He jumped up and laid on the pillow tucked under my arm, kitty purrs and kitty kisses deployed. I petted him a good long while, while Nico, big kitty-boy that he is, lay stretched out, pushed up against my left leg as it crossed over my right. Finally, I stretched, sat up and rose, thanking God and my angels for my restful sleep, but also for my waking. I showered, made coffee, fed Echo, cleaned the kitty box, rearranged a few plants on the porch and now, here I sit on a beautiful Sunday morning, pen and notebook in front of me.

It’s cool still, but as the sun rises it brings heat with it. The birds are not in the feeder, but I can hear them in the trees all around me. I wish I knew how to identify birds by their song better than I do, but I don’t. I hear cardinals calling – easy to identify. I can pick out frog-song; that steady low, sweet sound that often sounds like crickets singing in the grass. There is a slight breeze causing a gentle undulation in the tree tops; leaves flutter softly all around; the beautiful, romantic silvery, gray-green Spanish moss swaying as it hangs low to the ground from tree branches. There seems to be an excessive sound of traffic on the distant highway and on the main road to town; I am not sure why so early on Sunday morning. The world will slowly start creeping in again soon, I know. The pandemic has caused so much less reason to be out and about, and early this Sunday morning, it seems others must have more reason than I to be away from home.

A crow flies out over the pasture, the sound of its calls echoing, haunting. For some reason my thoughts went to Black Lake, and I had a memory of crows and ravens calling to each other over the field behind the house on summer mornings. I’ve never associated crow calls with Black Lake before, but today, for some reason, they did. Prior to the crow I was thinking of my love of outdoors; of sunshine shimmering, sparkling on the gossamer threads of last night's spider webs woven in the grass, swinging quietly in the morning breeze. I was thinking of how much I love these peaceful moments, yet how for so long I let this slide from myself. I would sit late into the night at home as a youth, listening to the soothing sound of the fan in my window, a quietly dim lamp shining on my paper and pen, the gold-green brocade of the chair beneath me rough, as I traced the patterns with my left fingertips, even as I wrote with my right. I thought of how it felt as I sat in the window of my dorm room, late at night, watching life below, quiet, dark, silent, yet someone always out and about; when would life happen to me, for me? And I would imagine my life, my future – when it would all begin. Poetry was always close in my heart, in my fingertips, on my paper back then. As an adult I let that poetry dry from my life, from my thoughts, and yet, it remained in my heart always. I thought of how, as an adult of 38 it came crashing back into my life in a big way – and I realized I’d forgotten who that teen was; that passionate, full-of-life teen who wrote poetry was; where did she go? In the twenty years since that awakening; that collision into myself again, I’ve written, a lot. Good, bad; reams of notebooks full. I’ve laughed and cried, struggled, lived, wrote – or not. I’ve discovered the life I thought I would find back then, the life I imagined as a teen sitting in that dorm room or sitting in that gold chair late nights while the rest of the house slept. I’ve found the life I thought I would have, prior to meeting Steve.



I’m still in the process of becoming, even now, as I sit here on my porch, listening to birdsong, watching moss sway, seeing spiderwebs glisten in the sunshine; the raucous call of crows adding to the musical track. Even now, I continue to become who it is I was meant to be. Each and every day; it’s a new adventure, a new world, a new life full of new chances. And I am still becoming Me.

To Everything There is a Season

There is so much peace at waking early in the morning – before the birds, before the morning rush begins. The morning rush, these days, is so much quieter than a month ago. Yesterday Hillsborough County ordered a stay-at-home order with a 9:00 pm – 5:00 am curfew. Essential employees can go out – medical teams, grocery stores, and so on. For today, I am essential, as I prepare to go to school, once again, to distribute laptops to students who still might like them and would like to learn at home. I will leave here in about 30 minutes, and I’ll think more on the pandemic later. For now, I just want to take some moments and savor the quiet.

It is warm already; 74 when I woke at 3:30. It’s quiet outside, calm. Traffic on the distant interstate is a low rush of sound. The birds are not yet awake, although they will be soon. The sky to the east is still dark, no hint of morning. It’s always darkest before dawn – I am a librarian, and research is a true passion of mine. It’s a truism that continues, even now. It is a phrase attributed to and English Theologian, back in the mid 17th century. I take the actual meaning to be one of genuine hope; despite the dark of the night, the morning and sunlight is not far away, regardless the darkness of those last moments of true night. Are we living in the darkness before dawn? As an optimistic with realistic tendencies, I have to hope and believe this is true. There is so much strife in our world on all sides; so many conspiracies about our global situation. He said, she said, they did – did you hear? I just have to believe that these are the dark moments before the sun shines again and we settle in to our new normal, whatever that may be. Everything passes; we all know the song by Pete Seger, sung by the (Limelighters, first) Byrds in the 60s - Turn, Turn, Turn. “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season turn, turn, turn. and a time to every purpose under heaven”. It’s the basic theory, first explored in the Bible and Ecclesiastes; everything has a season, and this, too, shall pass.

Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me - Book Review

This is a book I would have loved as a teen. Raw, realistic fiction based on teenage angst. JL is on the cusp of adulthood with her looming 16th birthday. Her hippy parents have always raised her different from her friends, but she has always had her best friend Aubrey by her side. Her father cleans up his act and his new job sends him to far-off California, with a promise that he will be home in 6 months, and then another, and still another. JL's mother is not handling the separation well, and wanders around the house beautiful, but lost without her husband. JL is left fending for herself, with the partial support of her grandmother who refuses to see the seriousness of JL's mother's condition, but who also supports her granddaughter in her quest and love of butterflies.

JL has always been dependent on the love and support of her best-friend Aubrey. Aubrey's family is loving and supportive, yet JL finds herself and Aubrey not such great friends in high school years, especially because JL's family is falling apart and JL has too little adult supervision. JL falls in love with bad-boy Max, and she tries to cope with her growing love for him, the loss of her best friend, the loss of her father and her mother's worsening condition.

This is the story of hope, of growing up, facing changed friendships, falling in love, and experiencing glimpses of who we are meant to be along the way. It's beautifully written, full of both hope and despair, and also of the joys and sorrows the world can provide.

You Are Not Alone - Book Review

Wow. Astonishing. If you've read Anonymous Girl and The Wife Between Us and were shocked, amazed, appalled, fascinated at the convoluted oh-so-involved stories that Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen wove - You are Not Alone. Coincidentally, their new partnership with the upcoming book You Are Not Alone does not disappoint in anyway. Psychologically atypical, aberrant, seemingly down-trodden, down-on-their-luck female characters who discover new strengths when confronted with plots that twist and turn toward unimaginable conclusions.

Shay's life has taken a downward spiral; she is working a temp job after losing a dream job to "downsizing". She shares an apartment with Sean, a man she realized she has feelings for, but he's in love with someone else. One muggy afternoon she witnesses a violent act of desperation which sends her farther down a spiral; until she meets Cassandra and Jane and things begin to change. She longs for friendship, to belong to a group of friends, and at first she feels acceptance. But all change is not necessarily good, and Shay finds herself in a no-win situation. Strength comes from the depths of the soul sometimes. Like their two previous books, Greer and Pekkanen write characters and situations that make the reader glad to be part of a mundane world. When I finished you Are Not Alone, my first thought was, wow, I am SO glad my own life is extremely boring by comparison!