Given my health issues, it's not surprising that I'm reading a lot more, especially since I have to spend so much time resting. Although I've read some good literary fiction and excellent non-fiction, when I am most tired, I turn to the fluff I love best: mysteries. And these days, I tend to move back and forth between tried and true classics from the golden era and contemporary cozies or police procedurals.
When I move in the direction of the golden era, I sometimes go back to my favorite writers and sometimes I go back and "discover" classic writers who are new to me. I enjoy both, but lately I've been on a bit of a Christie tear. Although I've read most of Christie's books (some more than once) it's been years since I've read a lot of them, so many years that they are either actually new to me or were read so far in the past they may as well be new because I don't remember them well. I certainly don't remember them well enough to remember "whodunit."
I find myself missing book review writing, so I thought that once in a while, I'd let myself exercise the old review writing muscles again. What better way to break back into review writing than with a review of an old-but-I-think-new-to-me Christie novel?
1942s The Moving Finger was the third Miss Marple novel ever published. I'm fairly certain this was the first time I ever encountered it, mostly because I don't remember ever reading a Miss Marple book in which Miss Marple appeared so little.
That was the book's most surprising feature by far. While Miss Jane Marple, Christie's white-haired detective, always has a kind of "background" role, she usually arrives on the scene fairly early and stays there consistently. While the main detectives hum along, attempting to solve the case, Miss Marple smiles gently, asks an inquisitive and seemingly innocent question or two (or four or eight or twelve) and before you can inquire, "Would you like another cup of tea, ma'am?" she has the thing solved. What's wonderful is that she always solves it with a twinkle and a sweet touch of poignancy, remembering someone she knew once who reminded her of the victim...and quite often the criminal. For a kind, elderly spinster, Miss Marple has no scruples about reminding everyone, character and reader alike, that people really can be quite wicked. And sad. And lonely. And unwise. And inattentive. It's in noting these kinds of characteristics in all people that she often discovers the line running right through the story that other, more professional sleuths all too often miss.
Speaking of missing, I miss her in this book. While I mostly liked the story's narrator, Jerry Burton, an airman recovering from an accident, I kept impatiently waiting for Miss Marple to show up on the scene and set him and his sister Joanna straight about what's going on in the little village in which they recently settled. They settle there in a rental home so Jerry can recover from his injuries; they think this out-of-the-way hamlet will provide Jerry with just the rest and peacefulness he needs. Little do they know that little out-of-the-way hamlets can sometimes be seething with scandals and unsolved crimes. This one certainly is.
In fact, the town of Lymstock, which "had been a place of importance at the time of the Norman Conquest" but by "the twentieth century it was a place of no importance whatsoever," seems cozy and quiet enough for a convalescing soldier. But the Burton siblings haven't been there very long when they become the recipients of a nasty, anonymous letter, the kind put together with letters cut from an old book. It turns out that they aren't the only people in town to receive such a letter. Most of the town's most prominent residents have received at least one. These letters, whose typed envelopes tell little about their author, while the postmarks indicate the author is local, accuse people in vague and general terms of awful but unprovable things.
Jerry and Joanna find themselves trying to puzzle out the identity of the letter writer, but they, like the local police, can't get too far at guessing who it might be. In fact, in spite of the annoying embarrassment of the letters, hardly anyone takes them too seriously...until the shock of receiving one seems to send a resident into such a tailspin that she commits suicide. Or does she?
It's not long before a maid who served at the home of the dead woman also turns up dead, this time unmistakably murdered, presumably for something she might have seen. Before you know it, Scotland Yard is called in. And before you can pour yet another cup of tea (lots of tea gets poured in this one) another resident gets impatient with the professionals and calls in her old friend Jane Marple to try to figure things out.
By the time Jane got called, I was feeling rather impatient. She appears in only a handful of scenes, and while she's her sweet and smart self, asking the right questions and ultimately setting up the dangerous encounter with the correct suspect, I felt a bit cheated that we hadn't had more time with her. I'd be curious to know why she appears so little in the book. Did Agatha Christie already have a book ready in the wings without any Miss Marple at all, only to have her publishers tell her that the old lady's first two tales had been such a hit the public was demanding more? But if so, why not go back and put her in more from the start? It wouldn't have been so hard to do. If she was the friend of a resident in Lymstock, why not have her show up a fortnight earlier to visit? Or be called in by the friend before the first death in the town, just on the basis of the puzzle that needs solving about the author of the anonymous letters?
Besides being disappointed by not enough time with Miss Marple, I was a bit thrown off by the narrator. While I appreciated the way he thought through things regarding the mystery, I felt off balance by his lack of development from the beginning on. It took me a while to be sure he was male; it took me even longer to figure out his name (I don't think she mentioned it until well into the story, though she might have dropped it briefly and I just missed it). My favorite part of most Christie novels is her way with characterization, and she doesn't disappoint with a fine cast of townies and potential suspects, but I think she could have done more with her narrator, especially if we were getting page time with Jerry at the expense of page time with Miss Marple.
Ah well. Even Christie at her not-quite-best is still better than many people at their heights, and this was an enjoyable mystery with good touches of Christie humour and an interesting ending I didn't see coming. If you're a enthusiast for mysteries with elements of romance, I think you'll like what she does here too -- not in one part of the story, but actually in two.
I'm thankful that The Moving Finger wasn't where the Miss Marple stories ended...most of the best ones, in fact, were still to come.
***1/2 stars
First published in the US in 1942 and in the UK in 1943
Showing posts with label book reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book reviews. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Monday, April 10, 2017
From the Archives: Review of Mary Oliver's "Thirst"
I can't believe we're ten days into April already and I've not posted anything for poetry month! Having gone back on the chemo trial, I do have a few reasons (one big one being fatigue) for not having done much to celebrate. To remedy that, and yet save myself some energy, I thought I'd dig into my Epinions archive for some poetry reviews I wrote a few years ago. They will likely have some minor revisions.
And to kick things off, I thought I'd start with my 2013 review of Mary Oliver's 2006 poetry collection Thirst. Though I'm not sure I've ever met an Oliver collection I didn't like, this one is one of my favorites.
Hoping to make some posts soon in honor of Holy Week and the upcoming Easter season too.
************
Thirst by Mary Oliver: Standing Still and Learning to Be Astonished
(Originally published on Epinons.com in 2013; slightly revised 2017)
Although I've known and enjoyed poems by Mary Oliver for over two decades, it was just recently that I read one of her poems online and found myself thinking "I really must read more." I went searching out the collection that included the particular poem that spoke to me so deeply, and I'm glad I did. Thirst, a collection of 43 poems published in 2006, was a lovely read -- and a book I know I will go back to.
Reviewing poetry often feels daunting. That’s especially true when reviewing poems by someone like Mary Oliver, whose style is so light and gracious that you get a sense of her words alighting on pages like birds perching on branches. Anything I can add in my prosaic review feels a little bit like snow weighing down the branch. There’s a temptation to just use the occasion of a review to point to the poems themselves. Reading poetry – rather than talking about it – will always be the best way to experience it.
But I really did love this book, so I will add my decorative frosting to the branch on which the poems perch.
The title "Thirst" comes from the final poem in the collection, a small prose poem which begins: “Another morning and I wake with thirst/for the goodness I do not have…” It’s a prayerful poem in which the poet confesses both her love for all the good she does have and her longing to know and love and experience more good. It includes one of my favorite lines in the whole collection, one directed Godward: “Love for the/earth and love for you are having such a/long conversation in my heart.” Yes.
That “long conversation in my heart” really describes the feel of this entire collection. In all 43 poems, we hear the poet’s voice – speaking to us, speaking to the world around her, speaking to the Lord – in a slow, measured, loving way. She observes and notes, wonders and questions, longs and celebrates, and each poem seems to provide a small epiphany, a lesson she has learned about herself in relationship to love.
The clarion call of the entire collection is the first poem “Messenger.” This was the bright-winged bird I found perched online, the poem that sung so clearly and beautifully to my heart that I went running after it. It begins “My work is loving the world.” The rest of the poem, and indeed the rest of the collection, seems to bear out that declaration, as Oliver notices the specific beauty and sacredness of created things and finds her place in the world as a grateful singer.
“Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished…”
she writes, in words that I find I too can claim. I quote here not just to share a part of the poem I love, but to give you a taste of her metrics, the way she breaks lines and finds music in words.
While nature is the underlying music in most of the poems here, other notes emerge as important refrains. A number of the poems in this volume have to do with aging, death, and grief. In several poems, such as “After Her Death,” and “What I Said at Her Service,” Oliver wrestles overtly with her grief over the death of her partner of many years. Her wrestling with loneliness and her grief over the loss of human love has a quiet counterpart in her poems about her beloved but elderly dog Percy. The different kinds of loves – for beauty, for animal companions, for a human friend and lover – all swirl gently together like different colored liquids in a glass. And the glass is offered up gently as a cup she and the reader can sip together.
Oliver’s meditations on nature are always gentle and astute, and there are countless numbers of them that I love in this collection, including “Walking Home from Oak-Head,” “Ribbon Snake Asleep in the Sun,” (which reminded me much of Emily Dickinson), “Swimming With Otter,” and “The Beautiful, Striped Sparrow.”
What’s particularly moving in this volume, however, are the ways she turns so many of those meditations Godward, moving them into the realm of prayer. Although I don’t know anything specific about Oliver’s spiritual journey, it seems clear to me through these poems that she has come/is coming to a newfound sense of God’s presence – both in the created world, and in the world of the church. She connects her poetic work of loving attention to her life as a Christian. Three poems, presented in a row, seem to speak especially deeply to her growing faith: “Coming to God, First Days,” “The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist,” and “Six Recognitions of the Lord.” For readers who are perhaps not used to Oliver moving specifically and concretely in the realm of faith, these poems may come as a surprise. As someone who shares that faith, I found them deeply moving. She wears the voice of a Christian mystic simply and well. Her clear-focused eyes and poetic heart seem ready-made for understanding all of life in a sacramental way.
Then there is the poem “More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord” where she seems awash in awestruck praise, recognizing that even her finest, choicest words are just one drop of the ocean of praise that sings all around her:
“It is close to hopeless,
for what I want to say the red-bird
has said already, and better, in a thousand trees…”
And yet she continues to write, to pray, to be what she feels called to be:
“Lord, let me be a flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.
Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone
brave and kind, whose name I will never know.”
That humility and gentleness pervades the entire collection. Thirst both quenched my thirst for poetic beauty, and made me thirsty for more.
Thirst
Poems by Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2006
9780807068977
And to kick things off, I thought I'd start with my 2013 review of Mary Oliver's 2006 poetry collection Thirst. Though I'm not sure I've ever met an Oliver collection I didn't like, this one is one of my favorites.
Hoping to make some posts soon in honor of Holy Week and the upcoming Easter season too.
************
Thirst by Mary Oliver: Standing Still and Learning to Be Astonished
(Originally published on Epinons.com in 2013; slightly revised 2017)
"All
the quick notes/Mozart didn't have time to use/before he entered the
cloud-boat/are falling now from the beaks/of the finches..."
Although I've known and enjoyed poems by Mary Oliver for over two decades, it was just recently that I read one of her poems online and found myself thinking "I really must read more." I went searching out the collection that included the particular poem that spoke to me so deeply, and I'm glad I did. Thirst, a collection of 43 poems published in 2006, was a lovely read -- and a book I know I will go back to.
Reviewing poetry often feels daunting. That’s especially true when reviewing poems by someone like Mary Oliver, whose style is so light and gracious that you get a sense of her words alighting on pages like birds perching on branches. Anything I can add in my prosaic review feels a little bit like snow weighing down the branch. There’s a temptation to just use the occasion of a review to point to the poems themselves. Reading poetry – rather than talking about it – will always be the best way to experience it.
But I really did love this book, so I will add my decorative frosting to the branch on which the poems perch.
The title "Thirst" comes from the final poem in the collection, a small prose poem which begins: “Another morning and I wake with thirst/for the goodness I do not have…” It’s a prayerful poem in which the poet confesses both her love for all the good she does have and her longing to know and love and experience more good. It includes one of my favorite lines in the whole collection, one directed Godward: “Love for the/earth and love for you are having such a/long conversation in my heart.” Yes.
That “long conversation in my heart” really describes the feel of this entire collection. In all 43 poems, we hear the poet’s voice – speaking to us, speaking to the world around her, speaking to the Lord – in a slow, measured, loving way. She observes and notes, wonders and questions, longs and celebrates, and each poem seems to provide a small epiphany, a lesson she has learned about herself in relationship to love.
The clarion call of the entire collection is the first poem “Messenger.” This was the bright-winged bird I found perched online, the poem that sung so clearly and beautifully to my heart that I went running after it. It begins “My work is loving the world.” The rest of the poem, and indeed the rest of the collection, seems to bear out that declaration, as Oliver notices the specific beauty and sacredness of created things and finds her place in the world as a grateful singer.
“Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished…”
she writes, in words that I find I too can claim. I quote here not just to share a part of the poem I love, but to give you a taste of her metrics, the way she breaks lines and finds music in words.
While nature is the underlying music in most of the poems here, other notes emerge as important refrains. A number of the poems in this volume have to do with aging, death, and grief. In several poems, such as “After Her Death,” and “What I Said at Her Service,” Oliver wrestles overtly with her grief over the death of her partner of many years. Her wrestling with loneliness and her grief over the loss of human love has a quiet counterpart in her poems about her beloved but elderly dog Percy. The different kinds of loves – for beauty, for animal companions, for a human friend and lover – all swirl gently together like different colored liquids in a glass. And the glass is offered up gently as a cup she and the reader can sip together.
Oliver’s meditations on nature are always gentle and astute, and there are countless numbers of them that I love in this collection, including “Walking Home from Oak-Head,” “Ribbon Snake Asleep in the Sun,” (which reminded me much of Emily Dickinson), “Swimming With Otter,” and “The Beautiful, Striped Sparrow.”
What’s particularly moving in this volume, however, are the ways she turns so many of those meditations Godward, moving them into the realm of prayer. Although I don’t know anything specific about Oliver’s spiritual journey, it seems clear to me through these poems that she has come/is coming to a newfound sense of God’s presence – both in the created world, and in the world of the church. She connects her poetic work of loving attention to her life as a Christian. Three poems, presented in a row, seem to speak especially deeply to her growing faith: “Coming to God, First Days,” “The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist,” and “Six Recognitions of the Lord.” For readers who are perhaps not used to Oliver moving specifically and concretely in the realm of faith, these poems may come as a surprise. As someone who shares that faith, I found them deeply moving. She wears the voice of a Christian mystic simply and well. Her clear-focused eyes and poetic heart seem ready-made for understanding all of life in a sacramental way.
Then there is the poem “More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord” where she seems awash in awestruck praise, recognizing that even her finest, choicest words are just one drop of the ocean of praise that sings all around her:
“It is close to hopeless,
for what I want to say the red-bird
has said already, and better, in a thousand trees…”
And yet she continues to write, to pray, to be what she feels called to be:
“Lord, let me be a flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.
Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone
brave and kind, whose name I will never know.”
That humility and gentleness pervades the entire collection. Thirst both quenched my thirst for poetic beauty, and made me thirsty for more.
Thirst
Poems by Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2006
9780807068977
Thursday, December 08, 2016
Hidden Christmas: Timothy Keller Shares the Gospel With Clarity and Beauty
In recent years, Timothy Keller has become one of my favorite spiritual writers currently writing today. I have read a handful of his books in whole or in part. The "in part" comes because he writes so thoughtfully and deeply that I often find myself taking notes as I read, which means I don't always have time to finish his books before they go back to the library. Though I am thankful I can always check them out again!
Not long ago, I discovered he had written a new book entitled Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. I got the news from Byron Borger on his terrific blog at Hearts and Minds Books. I trust Borger a lot as a reviewer, so when he placed this book in first place on his "must reads" for Advent, and wrote that he was "very grateful for its clear headed teaching" I went straight to my library catalog and put it on hold. Since it was already December, I thought I might have a long wait, but to my surprise and delight, it hit the hold shelf quickly...giving me some unexpected Advent reading.
When it comes to spiritual books, I am usually a sipper, not a gulper, but here's the thing -- I couldn't put this book down. It's true it's relatively short: just eight chapters and 144 pages, but not being able to put it down is not something I am used to saying about a book that is essentially devotional in nature. Keller draws on years worth of Christmas sermons he's given as a Presbyterian pastor in a handful of churches, and all I can say is I imagine he is a terrifically compelling speaker. These chapters are so clear, so cogent, and so soaked in the grace and goodness of the gospel that any heart hungry to grow closer to Jesus is going to love reading them.
Essentially what he does in each chapter is focus on a biblical text that relates some part of the Christmas story, and then dives deep for real and powerful truth about what that text means and how it can affect us when we embrace the truth of the text. The Scriptural passages he chooses are excellent ones: some of them are the ones you expect (the annunciation, the angels imparting the good news to the shepherds, the "people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light," the wise men making their visit, etc.) and some of them are ones you might not expect quite as much, such as the genealogy passages about Jesus' lineage, the word Mary receives from Simeon that Jesus is destined to cause the rise and and fall of many and that a sword will pierce her soul, and the words of the apostle John in 1 John chapter 1 about how he had truly seen and looked at and touched the Word of Life. In each of these, and other cases, he expounds so clearly and beautifully on the passage, bringing certain things about it to light -- some I had pondered before, and some I honestly never had thought of in just quite the way he was pondering it.
This is a book that both comforts and challenges us with the truth of the incarnation: that Jesus truly was God who took on human flesh and descended from heaven to share our lives and to rescue us from sin and death, a rescue we could never ever perform for ourselves. Over and over, he points to this truth, and doesn't just point to it, but invites us to embrace it in all its radical wonder and beauty. He reminds us of what our lives can look like and be like -- truly free and wonderfully saved -- when we trust in the truth of these accounts, look to Jesus, and really place our trust in him as Savior of the world and King of our hearts.
His point in the introduction of the book is that "Christmas is the only Christian holy day that is also a major secular holiday..." although there are still glimmers of the reality it stands for in the ways that some secular people celebrate (putting up lights, listening to carols that still speak the gospel, giving gifts). His hope is that this little book can help people who celebrate Christmas without a full awareness of why they are celebrating to learn more about its real roots, because "to understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel." So this is definitely a book you can recommend to friends who are not Christians, but who are open to reading and learning more about it.
On the other hand, it is also a book I think the church itself needs to read, so I also recommend it to brothers and sisters in the faith. For many of us, we have perhaps unconsciously fallen into celebrating Christmas in ways that dip far more into secular understandings that we realize. I don't necessarily mean that we buy totally into the season's commercialism (I know plenty of Christians who have simplified that element of the celebration, and who spend a good deal of time preparing their hearts and the hearts of their families through Advent preparation) but I think it's easy for all of us to fall into a simplistic sentimentalization of the story of Jesus' birth, perhaps partly because we've heard it so often and have so many nostalgic associations with it. Like our non-believing friends, we need to keep hearing the Gospel, even if we have already responded to it and given our lives to Jesus. We need to keep preaching (or letting other people preach) to our own hearts about how much we need God, how deeply he shows his love for us through the incarnation and ultimately through his suffering and death, how we need to rely on the resurrected Lord daily for his strength, mercy, and goodness.
This book was definitely the kind of preaching I needed this Advent. I might add that this is the first Advent which I have ever celebrated that has felt overshadowed by suffering and death: I lost my dear mother a few days before Christmas last year and am missing her so much; I have struggled in almost eleven months of treatment for late-stage cancer; and (in a much smaller part of everything, but still part of it) I am having to move from the home where I've lived for nearly twenty years to a brand new place. Put it all together, and you can see that I am a woman in need of contemplating the Christmas story anew -- but then isn't this really a need each one of us has? Because we all live in a world that is full of suffering, pain, homesickness, brokenness, worry, fear, and yes, death. THAT is the world Jesus came to, and he came to it because it was filled with such things. He came to bring life and to be the light. He came to save us because we could not save ourselves. And he came to bring comfort and rest to the weary, because he loves us so.
I'm deeply grateful that Timothy Keller reminded me of the power and truth of the Gospel in such compelling and clearly ordered reflections. I needed those reminders this year. If you do too, I highly recommend you find and read a copy of Hidden Christmas. I loved gulping it down like a parched woman who needed a long drink of living water, but I plan to go back to it and sip again and again.
Not long ago, I discovered he had written a new book entitled Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. I got the news from Byron Borger on his terrific blog at Hearts and Minds Books. I trust Borger a lot as a reviewer, so when he placed this book in first place on his "must reads" for Advent, and wrote that he was "very grateful for its clear headed teaching" I went straight to my library catalog and put it on hold. Since it was already December, I thought I might have a long wait, but to my surprise and delight, it hit the hold shelf quickly...giving me some unexpected Advent reading.
When it comes to spiritual books, I am usually a sipper, not a gulper, but here's the thing -- I couldn't put this book down. It's true it's relatively short: just eight chapters and 144 pages, but not being able to put it down is not something I am used to saying about a book that is essentially devotional in nature. Keller draws on years worth of Christmas sermons he's given as a Presbyterian pastor in a handful of churches, and all I can say is I imagine he is a terrifically compelling speaker. These chapters are so clear, so cogent, and so soaked in the grace and goodness of the gospel that any heart hungry to grow closer to Jesus is going to love reading them.
Essentially what he does in each chapter is focus on a biblical text that relates some part of the Christmas story, and then dives deep for real and powerful truth about what that text means and how it can affect us when we embrace the truth of the text. The Scriptural passages he chooses are excellent ones: some of them are the ones you expect (the annunciation, the angels imparting the good news to the shepherds, the "people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light," the wise men making their visit, etc.) and some of them are ones you might not expect quite as much, such as the genealogy passages about Jesus' lineage, the word Mary receives from Simeon that Jesus is destined to cause the rise and and fall of many and that a sword will pierce her soul, and the words of the apostle John in 1 John chapter 1 about how he had truly seen and looked at and touched the Word of Life. In each of these, and other cases, he expounds so clearly and beautifully on the passage, bringing certain things about it to light -- some I had pondered before, and some I honestly never had thought of in just quite the way he was pondering it.
This is a book that both comforts and challenges us with the truth of the incarnation: that Jesus truly was God who took on human flesh and descended from heaven to share our lives and to rescue us from sin and death, a rescue we could never ever perform for ourselves. Over and over, he points to this truth, and doesn't just point to it, but invites us to embrace it in all its radical wonder and beauty. He reminds us of what our lives can look like and be like -- truly free and wonderfully saved -- when we trust in the truth of these accounts, look to Jesus, and really place our trust in him as Savior of the world and King of our hearts.
His point in the introduction of the book is that "Christmas is the only Christian holy day that is also a major secular holiday..." although there are still glimmers of the reality it stands for in the ways that some secular people celebrate (putting up lights, listening to carols that still speak the gospel, giving gifts). His hope is that this little book can help people who celebrate Christmas without a full awareness of why they are celebrating to learn more about its real roots, because "to understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel." So this is definitely a book you can recommend to friends who are not Christians, but who are open to reading and learning more about it.
On the other hand, it is also a book I think the church itself needs to read, so I also recommend it to brothers and sisters in the faith. For many of us, we have perhaps unconsciously fallen into celebrating Christmas in ways that dip far more into secular understandings that we realize. I don't necessarily mean that we buy totally into the season's commercialism (I know plenty of Christians who have simplified that element of the celebration, and who spend a good deal of time preparing their hearts and the hearts of their families through Advent preparation) but I think it's easy for all of us to fall into a simplistic sentimentalization of the story of Jesus' birth, perhaps partly because we've heard it so often and have so many nostalgic associations with it. Like our non-believing friends, we need to keep hearing the Gospel, even if we have already responded to it and given our lives to Jesus. We need to keep preaching (or letting other people preach) to our own hearts about how much we need God, how deeply he shows his love for us through the incarnation and ultimately through his suffering and death, how we need to rely on the resurrected Lord daily for his strength, mercy, and goodness.
This book was definitely the kind of preaching I needed this Advent. I might add that this is the first Advent which I have ever celebrated that has felt overshadowed by suffering and death: I lost my dear mother a few days before Christmas last year and am missing her so much; I have struggled in almost eleven months of treatment for late-stage cancer; and (in a much smaller part of everything, but still part of it) I am having to move from the home where I've lived for nearly twenty years to a brand new place. Put it all together, and you can see that I am a woman in need of contemplating the Christmas story anew -- but then isn't this really a need each one of us has? Because we all live in a world that is full of suffering, pain, homesickness, brokenness, worry, fear, and yes, death. THAT is the world Jesus came to, and he came to it because it was filled with such things. He came to bring life and to be the light. He came to save us because we could not save ourselves. And he came to bring comfort and rest to the weary, because he loves us so.
I'm deeply grateful that Timothy Keller reminded me of the power and truth of the Gospel in such compelling and clearly ordered reflections. I needed those reminders this year. If you do too, I highly recommend you find and read a copy of Hidden Christmas. I loved gulping it down like a parched woman who needed a long drink of living water, but I plan to go back to it and sip again and again.
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Llama, Llama Red Pajama: In Memory of Anna Dewdney
The literary
world was saddened this month to lose author and illustrator Anna Dewdney. Our household was saddened too.
Dewdney was
the beloved author and illustrator of the Llama, Llama books for preschoolers.
We discovered the original book, Llama,
Llama Red Pajama not long after it was first published in 2005. Our
daughter was the perfect age for the book then, and our family read it over and
over, delighting in both its pictures and its rhymes.
I love what
Dewdney once said: “A good children’s book can be read by an
adult to a child, and experienced genuinely by both… A good children’s book is
like a performance. I don’t feel my world really exists until an adult has read
it to a child.”
There is great joy, as a parent, in helping your child
discover the power and beauty of a classic book that has been around for many
years before they were born, but there is also joy in discovering a brand new
classic-in-the-making right alongside your child. That’s always how it felt
when I would bring out Llama, Llama.
In honor of Ms. Dewdney’s life and work, I thought I
would pull my October 2006 review of Llama, Llama from my archives and re-post
it here. It was fun to revisit the delight our family found in the book when
our daughter, now a teenager, was just four years old.
Below is the slightly touched up version of that
ten year old review.
********
We love books that make us laugh! Ever since my
now four year old daughter was an infant, we've enjoyed discovering books that
make her smile, grin, or chortle. Those stories that inspire soft giggles? Even
better. But what's really fun is when we find a book that causes all those things and then some. Llama, Llama Red Pajama is just such a book. It doesn't just make her smile. It causes her to erupt in side-splitting shouts of laughter! And between the enjoyment we get from hearing our little girl laugh so hard, and the humor that ensues from repeated parental readings of tongue-twisty rhymes involving the phrase "Mama Llama," we laugh right along with her.
Be warned. Llama, Llama Red Pajama is a habit forming phrase. Once you've read this book -- and if you have a 2-6 year old in your house, you will likely be asked to read it at least a dozen more times -- you will find yourselves repeating this phrase, not only when you read together, but just at random and for fun.
That’s because the prhase is a fun rhyme in a book full of great rhymes accompanied by truly funny pictures. Llama, Llama Red Pajama is a young male llama who has trouble settling down to sleep at bedtime. Throughout most of the story, he's in bed cuddling his stuffed baby llama. He's wearing bright red pajamas, of course. Mama Llama in a blue dress, apron and pearls (looking for all the world like a llama version of Donna Reed) tucks him in, kisses him good-night, and heads downstairs to do the supper dishes.
That's when the fun ensues. As any young child knows, sometimes when your Mama closes that door at night and disappears, you start to wonder. Where is she? Is she coming back? What's she doing without me? You start to get lonely. You start to see things in the dark. You start to wonder if you need to go to the bathroom or get a drink.
Lllama, Llama Red Pajama (one wonders if that's his full name on his birth certificate!) begins to wonder all those things. In rollicking rhyme, we learn:
Lllama llama
red pajama
feels alone
without his mama.
Baby llama wants a drink.
Mama's at the kitchen sink.
And later on:
Llama llama
red pajama
waiting waiting
for his mama.
Mama isn't
coming yet.
Baby llama
starts to fret.
The book wonderfully captures the night-time insecurities and impatience of a young child, but in such a fun way that it creatively defuses them. First time author-illustrator Anna Dewdney captures those childish feelings just perfectly, right down to the fact that "Llama, llama" keeps attributing his feelings and the subsequent behavior (hollering, wailing, pouting, even jumping on the bed!) to his stuffed toy llama, much as a child might say it was her doll who needed a drink of water or an extra kiss good-night.
I appreciate it that this is not a story about deep, dark night-time fears. Many picture books want to deal with fears about monsters under the bed or in the closet. Those might be helpful if you need to find ways to creatively discuss a specific fear, but if your child hasn't struggled with those, you certainly don't want to introduce the specific fearful thoughts into her mind! Instead, this book is more about general night-time anxieties that all children can relate to, as well as the need that all toddlers and preschoolers feel from time to time for just a little bit of extra attention.
I certainly don't want my daughter emulating Llama lama's worst behavior, but I appreciate how she relates to his feelings. And it's worth nothing that she hasn't copied his behavior, perhaps in part because of its over-the-top silliness, and also because now that she's a big four year old she can feel mildly superior and amused about such fussy tantrums! This book has helped her to realize she's growing up. Gently laughing over such kinds of behavior is a backhanded way of defusing the anxieties themselves. It's a creative way of saying "see? Llama llama didn't need to worry. His Mama was right there all the time, and she came as soon as she could...she was just on the phone for a while!" The great thing is, you don't have to say that, because the story says it for you:
Little llama,
don't you know?
Mama llama
loves you so?
Mama Llama's
always near,
even if she's
not right here.
As much as we love the rhymes, the illustrations are what really make this story. I'm delighted you can see the cover which shows the wide-eyed little llama in bed. Every expression on his face, as well as his Mama's, is delightful. In fact the pictures are so expressive that you'd probably get the story (and even laugh a lot!) without the text at all. Dewdney claims that all the facial expressions she draws in her books are inspired by her own. All I can say is, she must be one expressive lady!
My daughter's favorite spread is actually the only one without any text. Llama llama finally works himself up into a "tizzy" (as Mama later calls it) and wails so loudly that Mama hangs up the phone and goes rushing up the stairs. There's a wonderful sequence of four pictures across two pages where you see her running, her own furry face crinkled with maternal worry, until she bursts into his room. Only to realize, of course, that he's fine.
I love that spread too, but I'm especially partial to the illustration of Llama, llama with his quilt pulled up over his nose. All you can see are his two huge eyes, his little hooves, and his long, floppy ears!
I will warn you that this book is not the most "settling" of bedtime reads, since it inspires so much laughter. If your child needs help calming down before bedtime (and what child doesn't from time to time?) you may want to choose a quieter story to follow. But sometimes a book of this tone is just right – especially if you want to help your child expend a bit of energy right before bedtime.
Llama, Llama Red Pajama is handsomely designed in bright colors, especially red and blue. The colorful, expressive pictures and the short stanzas of silly rhyming text combine to make this book one of our family's very favorite funny reads!
********
Review slightly revised and re-posted in loving memory of Anna Dewdney (December 25, 1965-September 3, 2016).
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