Religious Studies 101

I give my college students a religion quiz every semester, and, for a country theoretically operating on Judeo-Christian principles, I’m hard-pressed to find folks who are clear on the Christian stuff, let alone the Judeo. Despite our nearly 80% self-reported Christianity, we don’t really know a whole lot about our own religious history, so how can we possibly be open to and embracing of other worship forms? Growing up in a religious tradition that strongly discourages outside theological exploration, I was always the oddball interested in what everyone else was doing in the worship department. That may come partially from being raised with Southern roots and not being an evangelical. It may come from a natural curiosity. It could definitely be part of my contrary nature. But, at the heart of it, I think my intrigue with other religious traditions started in earnest the moment I opened my first All of a Kind Family book. Sydney Taylor’s series centers on a turn-of-the-century Jewish family, full of children, in working-class Brooklyn. They are devout, close-knit, and have little but each other. I love them and find myself reading about their adventures even as an adult. It is from them and those in their circle that I learned about the forgiveness of Yom Kippur, the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the bounty of Succos, and the sanctity of Passover. In Rabbi Francis Barry Silberg’s The Story of Chanukah, a simple board book tells a powerful story of a great people. Yevarchecha hashem. Amen.

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Chanukah-Francis-Barry-Silberg/dp/0824942256

http://www.ceebj.org/about_us/staff_list/

A Hoop That Never Ends

Six thousand tons of sunscreen wash into the ocean every year, exponentially encouraging the growth of viruses that attack coral reefs and other marine plant life. So, protecting your child’s tender parts as you romp on the beach is potentially contributing to the demise of flora half a world away. I’m not a “butterfly effect” believer--no wing flapping causes a tsunami--but a statistic like that makes you think. Call me an environmental wacko or whatever else means I care about the world I’m walking in and will leave behind, I know there is a cosmic connection between everything and everyone, and it is our job to protect it and our honor to be part of it. This notion of interconnectedness is, in large part, what led to my choice of vegetarianism. I couldn’t keep allowing other creatures to come to harm for my benefit. I thought of the direct link between actions and their impact during a moment of silence in observance of 9/11. My heart kept crying, “I’m sorry!” to all the souls of that day. Sorry for your suffering. Sorry for your death. Sorry for your life lived in chaos. Because of the ties that bind us, the human fabric tore, leaving ragged edges. But if we are united in tragedy, so, too, are we connected in joy. Debra Frasier’s On The Day You Were Born is a message to each little soul that the community of Earth anticipated their unique arrival with wonder. I like that idea.

http://www.amazon.com/Day-You-Were-Born/dp/0152579958

http://www.debrafrasier.com/

The Parent Trap

I recently started hanging out with toddlers (and their parents) again after a ten year absence. And things haven’t changed. There are only a few kinds of parents and nothing like a group gathering to get folks to revert to type. You know what I mean. There’s the perfect hair moms who show up at morning storytime looking like they’ve just come from the salon after picking junior up at the Baby Phat fashion show, who insist on taking the craft out of their kid’s hands to make sure it looks right. There’s the drill sergeant, camo-and-baseball-hat crowd whose kids are threatened with bodily harm for every offense. There’s the Birkenstocks devotees whose wee ones wear layers of fair trade clothes and smell like cruelty-free baby shampoo. There are the sight-impaired parents who can’t seem to see their kid tearing through the place like a hurricane, when even a legitimately blind person couldn’t miss it. There are the competers who need to one-up, the grabbers who snatch the best craft supplies for their darling, and the hoverers who should just put their kid in bubble wrap and be done with it. There are also some normal people who have normal kids with (mostly) normal behavior. They are rare. The bug world has their uptight population, too. In Sue Malyan’s Bugs, there’s a breed of the creepy crawlies called “parent bugs” who caretake their young long after every other big bug has ditched the little ones. Can bugs be helicopter parents?

https://www.libcat.oxfordshire.gov.uk/02_Catalogue/02_005_TitleInformation.aspx?rcn=1405311665&

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=223652

Under A Haystack

When I was a single mother on my own, my mom gave us a place to stay when we needed it, a vehicle to drive when we didn’t have one, and a helping hand with babysitting when I had to work or go somewhere you couldn’t wag a kid along. But since she was a working, single mom herself, our schedules didn’t always synch up. One day I had an appointment at the same time my mother had to be at work, so we appealed to my teenage brother, Todd. Not historically a big babysitter, he required some cajoling, but eventually said he would watch her if I could be back in time for him to go to work. No problem. Except the clock at the insurance agency was slow and I got home to an empty house. I thought he must have had to take her to his job and I called immediately to profusely apologize and say I was on my way. But his response was, “Oh, I totally forgot she was there,” meaning he did not have her. Trying to stay calm, I called my mother, thinking maybe she had the toddler. Which she didn’t. Panic-stricken, I had no idea what to do next when I heard a faint whimper. It turns out Keilana had fallen asleep and rolled off and under the bed out of sight. I think of that every time I read Little Boy Blue. Nursery rhyme or no, missing, sleeping kids are scary.

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Boy-Blue-Waldman/dp/0866118683

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Playmore-Inc/author/

Nothing To Fear

I’m surprised anyone ever chooses to be a superhero. It’s a pretty thankless job most of the time. You go around sacrificing your personal life and relationships for the sake of the public good, and, on a pretty regular basis, the community turns against you, even demonizes you, for what you can’t do or be for them. Oh sure, you get super powers, but how can it possibly be worth it? Being different just gets you a one-way ticket to social ostracism, it seems. The book Stranger in a Strange Land (which is not what we read for today, incidentally), is pretty widely known, but mostly for its unconventional treatment of less-than-monogamous sex. I think those who bring only that impression away from the book are missing Robert Heinlein’s more profound message of social commentary. Michael Valentine Smith was not like anybody else, but fascinated by what is generally considered mundane. He just wanted to see and experience the simple pleasures of life, and maybe use his gifts to give something back to the human community. If you’ve read the book, you know the thanks he gets for that. And isn’t that sad? It’s just tragic humanity tends to crush what it doesn’t understand simply to allay the fear the unknown creates. In Tomi Ungerer’s Moon Man, the guy in the green-cheese orb longs for a chance to visit Earth and dance like the people do. When he gets here, the welcome is less than friendly. When will we learn?

http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Man-Tomi-Ungerer/dp/1570982074

http://www.tomiungerer.com/

The B List

The alphabet marches on and we have arrived at “B” week. Naturally, there are many words needing our attention this week--bugs, butterflies, babies, bananas--but one is a can’t miss: bees. It’s particularly handy for teaching the letter, being exactly the same and all, but I have a complicated relationship with bees. I really love honey, but have done the whole honey-retrieval process, including suiting up and puffing out eye-stinging smoke, and would never eat honey if that was the only way I could get it. I am a hard-core pacifist, but experience an almost delirious joy at the idea that a bee I’ve just been stung by has ripped its own guts out and will soon die. I can get on board with the queen concept--giving proper credit to those who actually do the work of procreating is an idea humans could learn from--but feel a little uncomfortable with the drone situation for personal reasons (even though I know they are all boys). What to do? Of course, I may be overthinking things in light of the fact that we’re talking about stories for toddlers, but any two year-old who knows the words to both Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and Elvis’ “Fools Rush In” is obviously picking up messages we don’t even know we’re sending. Regardless of my relationship status with the bee folk, they are fascinating. In Elizabeth Winchester’s Bees!, we learned that one beehive houses 70,000 bees. That’s how many people go to the Superbowl. Who knew?

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Kids-Bees-Editors/dp/0060576421

http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Winchester/e/B001IR1C6K

Out With The Old

Years ago I found myself in a brouhaha without much context for the issue. It was the early ‘90s and Chico Unified School District had chosen to switch to a new math curriculum called “Math Land.” As the mom of a kindergartner, I was new to the public school parent advocacy game, but it seemed as if I should be concerned if everyone was in such a tizzy. I attended a “Parent Information Meeting,” that felt as hostile as a lynch mob, and tried to keep up. A near as I could tell, the parents were mostly freaked out because the new system wasn’t the old system and comfort-zone cages were being rattled. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember that “Math Land” is very heavy on the “manipulatives“--teacher talk for stuff you can hold in your hands. There were lots of those little plastic bears for counting and weighing, and those brightly-colored “Base 10” blocks for I don’t know what. Other pieces were collections of geometric shapes referred to by people in the know as tangrams, which I’d never heard of and didn’t know how to use. It turns out the shapes are not only an early introduction to geometry, they are also part of an ancient Chinese storytelling art. I only know this because Nick read Grandfather Tang’s Story by Ann Tompert to Scarlett and then helped her make her own set of tans. It’s amazing what you can learn when you’re open to new possibilities.

http://www.amazon.com/Grandfather-Tangs-Story-Dragonfly-Books/dp/0517885581

http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/birthbios/brthpage/01jan/1-11tompert.html