My Lobotomy by Howard Dully ****

Howard Dully was given a lobotomy in December 1960, when he had just turned 12 years old. His step-mother hated him & wanted him gone from her life, & this was her way of doing that. When that brutal procedure didn't make him non-communicative & immobile, he was made a ward of the state of California & lived the rest of his childhood & young adulthood in mental hospitals. As Howard writes in this book, he always wanted to know "why?" What had he done so wrong to warrant these actions against him?

When he was approached by two producers from NPR to do a 22 minute story about lobotomy, Howard finally found out what had happened to him. And the horrible truth, which was that he was a typical 12 year old boy, with no justification except his step-mother's lies for what was done to him.


To say this is a moving book is to put it mildly. The horror & outrage that I felt when reading this, & the fear that filled me when I realized that sometimes the medical community is not only incompetent but twisted, was breathtaking. How could this happen? How could this happen?


After reading the book I looked up Howard's NPR story online. If I thought the book was moving, it was nothing compared to hearing Howard himself finding out & dealing with what was done to him.


I think the thing that made the biggest impression on me was the realization of the power we, as adults, hold over children. We make so many choices for them, & not just for our own kids, but those we deal with in our jobs & in the community. We owe them the responsibility of doing what is best for them at all times, in all ways. As Howard points out, he was helpless against what was done to him. But no one stood up for him: not his father, not the doctors, not the nurses, no one.


With Holocaust Remembrance Day fast approaching (April 11), we remember to say, "Never again." Let's remember that when we deal with children also. Never again.

Gabriel's Triumph by Alison Hart ****

This was a very satisfying sequel to Gabriel's Horses, & again for me it has a lot to do with the horse racing aspect of it. Hearing about the races, the crowds, & the excitement makes me anxious for the Kentucky Derby!

It's 1864, and Gabriel is traveling north to Saratoga Springs to race at the most famous racetrack of the day. He meets many hazards on the train ride there & in the barns of the racetrack itself, but also meets up with his old friend Jackson & makes a new one. His goal is to become a famous jockey, while overcoming the prejudice he experiences by being a free black man during the Civil War.

I enjoyed the second book in the Racing to Freedom Trilogy, & can't wait to read the third book now. I'm also looking forward to reading Emma's River, Alison Hart's newest book, & which the author was kind enough to send to me! How cool is that?!? Thanks again, Ms. Hart, & happy reading everyone!

**********UPDATE********

You can read about how Alison does research for her books & enter to win a copy of Emma's River here. Good luck!

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky *****

Every once in a while, I will read a book that has a meaning of more than just the words that are written on its pages. This book in two parts, Suite Francaise, is a work of fiction. But the story behind its author has made it even more than the sum of its parts.

In the first part of the book, it's June of 1940, & the Nazis are invading France. The people of Paris are abandoning everything & racing in a frenzy to leave the city behind to what they assume will be its utter destruction. All classes of people are thrown together, much to their dismay, in this mass exodus. The rich, the famous, the struggling, the poor, all of them have the same kinds of experiences in the countryside surrounding Paris.

In the second part, Dolce, a small French village is subjected to the occupying forces. Nazi soldiers are housed in spare bedrooms, the community's horses are all bought for the war. The townspeople make money off the Germans, & the young people gradually find themselves in relationships with the enemy that they never thought they were capable of. As the new Eastern Front opens up with Russia, the book suddenly ends.

My above descriptions are of the book itself. What makes this more than it is, is the fate of the author.

Irene Nemirovsky was doubly damned, being not only Russian but Jewish. To the Nazis, Communists were almost as bad as Jews, & they pretty much assumed anyone from Russia was pro-Communist. Though Nemirovsky lived her adult life in France, she wasn't a citizen. When Paris fell she fled, like the characters from her book, into the countryside with her husband & daughters. There they thought they were safe, even as Irene started writing her new novel. Suite Francaise was going to be her masterpiece--her own War & Peace. She envisioned it in 5 distinct parts, like an orchestral symphony. She was destined to only get the first 2 parts done.

In July of 1942, she was arrested & sent to a concentration camp in France. From there she wrote 2 last letters to her family. Then she was put on a train east. To Auschwitz. She didn't last long there & died on August 17, without her family's knowledge. Desperate to find his wife, her husband, who was also a Russian Jew, frantically telegraphed & wrote to everyone he could think of who could help. It was to no avail, & 2 months later he was deported also. He was sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.

At this time, Nemirovsky's daughters were 5 & 10 years old. A family friend immediately removed the yellow stars off all their clothing & hid the children in several different places for the rest of the war. They were continually hunted by the French police, who apparently had nothing better to do, but luckily they were never caught.

Denise, the older daughter, kept her mother's leather bound notebook with her all through the war & after. She couldn't bring herself to read what was written within, but kept it simply as a memento. Then, in the early 1970's, she decided to donate it to a French collection of war writings. Looking at her mother's writing for the first time, she was surprised to find not just a journal as she always suspected, but also a book. It was finally published in 2004.

That is the story of Suite Francaise. I could go on & on about the book & the emotions it has stirred up in me. Anger, mostly. The waste, the terrible waste of human life & genius because of the Holocaust. I wanted so very much to read the end of this book--all 5 parts. I know it would have been the masterpiece she envisioned. Instead, her own life became the ending of her book.

Leanin' Dog by K.A. Nuzum ****

This book was recommended to me by the librarian at my son's school. I'd read another book by this author before & thought it was very good, but I didn't realize this was the same author until I'd finished Leanin' Dog.

12 year old Dessa Dean's mother has died--frozen to death while Dessa Dean helplessly tried to warm her. Now she can't even leave the porch of the cabin she lives in with her father without having what she calls a "daymare"--flashbacks to that horrible ordeal. But one day an old brown dog shows up at their door, & slowly Dessa Dean starts to come back to the world of the living again.

Leanin' Dog is another wonderful book by K.A. Nuzum. She's able to help us understand a girl's intense grief, & gives her a unique & special voice that you seem to be able to hear, as though she's talking out loud to you. For an author that's only written two books, she's had two winners already. I highly recommend this one to you.

Gabriel's Horses by Alison Hart ****

First, I have to say that this book has something to do with horse racing. And I've really liked horse racing since I was about 13 years old & watched the Kentucky Derby for the first time on TV. So right there, it had me. But it's also a well written book, with some interesting characters & a great insight into what life was like in Kentucky during the Civil War.

The book starts with Gabriel, a 12 year old slave, being given the chance to go to Lexington with his father & also his master. His father has bought himself freedom, & hopes to earn more money to buy both his wife & son theirs also.

Gabriel has a true gift with horses, which he inherited from his horse-training father. With a fair-minded master, he has an easy life for a slave, & he knows it. Opportunities seem to be opening up for Gabriel as a jockey, but just when he thinks he knows what the future will bring, the War invades his work life & his family.

I'm honestly not sure if I'll read the other two books in this series, but I do like this book for the back-door education it gives young readers into the Civil War from a slave's point of view. I never knew myself that Kentucky was a neutral state--it was much more peaceable than my native Missouri, where there were many bloody conflicts. But no state came out unscathed by the war, & no family did either.

Another great Mark Twain Award nominee. The kids of Missouri are voting right now on the winner--I'll be anxious to see what they end up liking the most!

Way Down Deep by Ruth White *****

This is another of the Mark Twain Award nominees, & so far it's my favorite. It's the story of the town of Way Down Deep, West Virginia, & also about a 3-year-old named Ruby June mysteriously found in front of the town courthouse just before the end of WWII. Ruby June becomes the heart & soul of Way Down Deep, but the peace & tranquility of town is disturbed when the mystery of her origins starts to surface.
Way Down Deep is the story of the preciousness of childhood, our greatest treasure. It's a quick read (2 days for me) & it will leave you feeling good about your own childhood & the kids around you. Give it a try, I highly recommend it.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling ****

I've never read The Jungle Book before--it was pretty good! I was bracing myself to read some of Kipling's notorious racist comments, but I didn't really encounter anything overtly bad. In the context of when it was written, it seemed fairly tame to me. I'm sure Kipling made his infamous opinions known in other works of his, but this one seems to be just typical of it's time.
The best part of this book was reading Riki-Tiki-Tavi. Puppy has watched the cartoon of this many many times, so I knew the story well. I was amazed by how true to the story Chuck Jones stayed when he made the cartoon--it's almost verbatim!
At this point in the book Puppy came up to me & asked what I was reading. I told him, & he insisted I read it to him. So I did. And then I had to read it to him again. And then one more time. He loved to hear it read, I think because he already had the pictures for it in his mind. It was neat to see how happy he was to totally understand every word he heard. I wonder if I can't find some other books that have been made into cartoons that I could read to him after he's seen them. It really seems to help with his comprehension.
Overall, a good book written mostly from different animals' points of view. Kipling had a wonderful way of portraying animals so people could understand them. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it before.