Kidlit for Grown-Ups, Part 2

Men of Iron, Howard Pyle Historic Fantasy / Jr High & Highschool /Pub 1919 Recommended by Janice Linnea in Monet's Garden, Cristina Bjork & Lena Anderson (illus) Picture Book / Elementary / Pub 1987 Recommended by Janice A Ring of Endless Light, Madeleine L'Engle Realistic Fantasy / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 1980 Recommended by Leta When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead Realistic SciFi / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 2009 Recommended by Lissy Emily of New Moon, L. M. Montgomery Historic Fiction / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 1923 Recommended by Liz Stories Jesus Told, Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen (illus) Picture Book / Preschool & Elementary / Pub 2005 Recommended by Sherry Max's New Suit, Rosemary Wells Picture Book / Preschool & Elementary / Pub 1979 Recommended by Sherry Waiting for Normal, Leslie Connor Realistic Fiction / Jr High & Highschool / Pub 2008 Recommended by Beth

Proof

Proving the existence of God is fairly easy. Any idiot can take a stab at that. As one might say in Chicagoese: What, you think all of this made itself up? Yeah. Sure.

-Carlos Eire, Learning to Die in Miami, 302.

Irenaeus, the World to Come, and Bowling

Irenaeus of Lyons, a second-century Christian bishop, once said that in the world to come, the fruits and vegetables will all beg to be picked and eaten, and actually try to outshout one another, all crying in unison, "Pick me, eat me, eat me." The first time I ever read that passage in Irenaeus, years later, I thought of the sound made by bowling pins when they're struck by a fast-rolling ball.

"Knock us down, hit us as hard as possible. Kill us, reduce us to splinters."

And could there be any sight sweeter than those pins scattering in all directions?

-Carlos Eire, Learning to Die in Miami, 86.

Fictional People

If you see someone unable to boil a kettle, open a sash window or understand he has an appalling haircut, it probably means he's fictional. -Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays is Missing

Vocation

As an Odd-Fish, it is not my job to be right, said Sir Oort. "It is my job to be wrong in new and exciting ways."

-James Kennedy, The Order of Odd-Fish, 175.

Kidlit for Grown-Ups

This summer I'm hosting a children's lit club for grown-ups. Here's the list of book recommendations from our first meeting: My Father's Dragon, Ruth Stiles Gannett Elementary / Fantasy / Published 1948 Recommended by Emily Reckless, Cornelia Funke Jr High & Highschool / Fantasy / Published 2010 Recommended by Emily Pictures of Hollis Woods, Patricia Reilly Giff Late Elementary & Jr High / Realistic Fiction / Published 2003 Recommended by Elissa Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt Late Elementary & Jr High / Realistic Fantasy / Published 1975 Recommended by Leta Otto of the Silver Hand, Howard Pyle Jr High & Highschool / Historic Fantasy / Published 1888 Recommended by Kathryn Operation Bonnet, Kimberly Stuart Highschool & Young Adult / Comedy of Errors / Published 2011 Recommended by Kathryn The Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago Preschool & Elementary / Picture Book / Published 2007 Recommended by Sherry Phoenix Rising, Karen Hesse Jr High & Highschool / Realistic Fiction / Published 1994 Recommended by Liz Ice, Arthur Geisert Preschool & Elementary / Picture Book (no text) / Published 2011 Recommended by Beth Cosmic, Frank Cottrell Boyce Jr High & Highschool / Realistic Fantasy / Published 2008 Recommended by Beth The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope Jr High & Highschool / Historic Fantasy / Published 1971 Recommended by Lydia (email entry!)

Evening

Here dies another day,
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

-G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Douglas Wilson in "Thanks for the Thanks", May/June 2011 issue of Books and Culture

Easter Day

Beauty now for ashes wear,
Perfumes for the garb of woe.
Chaplets for disheveled hair,
Dances for sad footsteps slow;
Open wide your hearts that they
Let in joy this Easter Day.

-Gerard Manly Hopkins, excerpt from "Easter"

Cheese

Some cultures are defined by their relationship to cheese.

-Benny & Joon

A Sick Day for Amos McGee

-Such a beautiful book, by Philip & Erin Stead. Hat tip: Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Snow

You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there--the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.

-Frederick Buechner, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale, 83.

Brotherly Love

"Wheeler, do you know why we've been friends?"

"I've thought so," Wheeler says. He has thought so because of that company of friends to which they both belong, which has been so largely the pleasure and meaning of both their lives. "But why?"

"Because we ain't been brothers."

"What are you talking about?" Wheeler says.

But he is afraid he knows, and his discomfort is apparent to them all...

"If we'd been brothers, you wouldn't have put up with me. Or anyhow you partly wouldn't have, because a lot of my doings haven't been your kind of doings. As it was, they could be tolerable or even funny to you because they wasn't done close enough to you to matter. You could laugh...

"Wheeler, if we're going to get this will made out, not to mention all else we've got to do while there's breath in us, I think you've got to forgive me as if I was a brother to you." He laughs, asserting for the last time the seniority now indisputably his, and casting it aside. "And I reckon I've got to forgive you for taking so long to do it."

-Wendell Berry, That Distant Land, 362-363.

The Line of Succession

"I mean you're a man indebted to a dead man. So am I. So was he. That's the story of it. Back of you is Jack Beechum. Back of him was Ben Feltner. Back of him was, I think, his own daddy. And back of him was somebody else, and on back that way, who knows how far? And I'm back of you because Jack Beechum is, and because he's back of me, along with some others. It's no use to want to make it on your own, because you can't..."

Elton laughs. "The line of succession I'm in says you've got to make it on your own. I'm in the line of succession of root, hog, or die."

"That may have been the line of succession you were in, but it's not the one you're in now. The one you're in now is different."

"Well, how did I get in it?" Elton says almost in a sigh, as if longing to be out of it.

"The way you got in it, I guess, was by being chosen. The way you stay in it is by choice."

-Wendell Berry, That Distant Land, 284.

The Lord is Thy Keeper

The Christian life is not a quiet escape to a garden where we can walk and talk uninterruptedly with our Lord; not a fantasy trip to a heavenly city where we can compare our blue ribbons and gold medals with others who have made it to the winner's circle. The Christian life is going to God. In going to God Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, drink the same water, shop the same stores, read the same newspapers, are citizens under the same governments, pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses, are buried in the same ground.

The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil, he will keep our life.

-Eugene Peterson on Psalm 121, quoted by James Calvin Schaap, "The Professor's Death Song," Books and Culture, Jan/Feb 2011, 37.

Alternative Energy Source

"Splendid! I just had an idea for a cheap form of power: by bringing pasta and antipasta together, we could be looking at the utter annihilation of ravioli and the liberation of vast quantities of energy. I safely predict that an average-size cannelloni would be able to power Swindon for over a year. Mind you, I could be wrong."

-Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, 18.

Merry Christmas

As a rule, I try not to repeat quotes. But in honor of Christmas, here's a favorite passage on the incarnation. Merry Christmas to all!

***

Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction. Dacians, Heruleans, Scythians, Sarmatians, Hyperboreans, heavy wheels without spokes, eyes sunk in fat, sodomy, double chins, illiterate emperors, fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves...all crammed into the passages of the Coliseum, and all wretched.

And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light and clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being—man the carpenter, man the plowman, man the shepherd, with his flock of sheep at sunset, man who does not sound in the least proud, man thankfully celebrated in all the cradle songs of mothers and in all the picture galleries the world over.

-Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

Tongue Twister

IRRELEVANT BENEVOLENT ELEPHANT

-Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots, 144.

***

I think this would be a perfect band and/or blog-name...

Kafka

"But this is preposterous!" shouted Hopkins as he was dragged away.

"No," replied the Magistrate, "this is Kafka."

-Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book, 198.

Welcome to Jurisfiction

"Please," said a voice close by, "draw me a sheep!"

I looked down to see a young boy of no more than ten. He had curly golden locks and stared at me with an intensity that was, to say the least, unnerving.

"Please," he repeated, "draw me a sheep."

"You had better do as he asks," said a familiar voice close by. "Once he starts on you he'll never let it go."

It was Miss Havisham. I dutifully drew the best sheep I could and handed the result to the boy, who walked away, very satisfied with the result.

"Welcome to Jurisfiction," said Miss Havisham...

-Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book, 285.

In a Philadelphia...

AL: Because in a Philadelphia, no matter what you ask for, you can't get it. You ask for something, they're not gonna have it. You want to do something, it ain't gonna get done. You want to go somewhere, you can't get there from here.

MARK: Good God. So this is very serious.

AL: Just remember, Marcus. This is a condition named for the town that invented the cheese steak. Something that nobody in his right mind would willingly ask for.

MARK: And I thought I was just having a very bad day....

AL: Sure. Millions of people have spent entire lifetimes inside a Philadelphia and never even knew it. Look at the city of Philadelphia itself. Hopelessly trapped forever inside a Philadelphia. And do they know it?

MARK: Well what can I do? Should I just kill myself now and get it over with?

AL: You try to kill yourself in a Philadelphia, you're only gonna get hurt, babe.

MARK: So what do I do?

AL: Best thing to do is wait it out. Someday the great cosmic train will whisk you outta the City of Brotherly Love and off to someplace happier.

-David Ives, Hat tip Terry Teachout