Haiku

For Module 1, Journey to Topaz

Uchida, Y. (1971). Journey to Topaz. Creative Arts Book Company: Berkeley.

Young Japanese girl
Goes to an internment camp
In Topaz, Utah

Delicate yet stark
Record of atrocity
Wreaked on innocents.

A cup of hot tea
And a handful of peanuts
Treasures between friends

Powerless and weak,
The maligned patriots wait
For a better time.

Tuberculosis
Strikes the young without warning
Falling in the dust.

A small trilobite
And a shard of arrowhead
Are they worth a life?

So many bright stars
Shine in the dark desert night
There is beauty here.

Freedom, freedom, free!
The air is somehow sweeter
Outside the barbed wire.

"As with many other picture books about war, The Journey is not for the very young. A sense of history and social justice is required to understand the events depicted. Children in grades 5 and up will see why Japanese Americans were among the first to speak up for Arab Americans during the current conflict. They'll also see how easily justice and compassion become casualties of war."

Polese, C. (1991). Journey to Topaz. School Library Journal 37(4), 43.

So many uses in the library! This would be excellent coupled with The Devil’s Arithmetic to discuss what similar things were happening in Europe. Or how about as part of a larger discussion about the American Immigrant Experience? There are many possibilities for expansion and exploration.

We Are His People, and the Sheep of His Pasture

During the next weeks I will be posting analyses of children’s and young adult books for my master’s degree class. This is an analysis for Module 1 of Slake’s Limbo.
Holman, F. Slake’s Limbo. New York: Aladdin Publishing. 1974.

Slake runs down into the subway station and doesn't emerge for almost six months. What he finds and what he learns turns an ordinary story of a boy finding a place in the world into an extraordinary tale of insight, friendship and redemption.

I just finished reading Slake’s Limbo, by Felice Holman. What an amazing, refreshing, compassionate story. Where has it been all my life? I am surprised that in all my reading I have never come across it before. Aremis Slake, who has no one except a harsh, disengaged aunt, runs down into the New York subway one day to escape some tormenters. He does not emerge into the fresh air and sun and sky again for 121 days. As I read I was reminded of Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road. I found myself reflecting on McCarthy’s book again and again as I read about Slake’s experiences in the subway. Certainly The Road is grimmer than Slake’s story, but there are glimpses of brightness, even joy as the father and son interacted. Similarly, there are bright flashes of goodness as Slake finds compassion in people around him, learns to feel compassion himself, and is given ways to survive that seem to appear quite serendipitously.

One of the things I loved best was the sub-plot of the subway operator: Willis Joe. This man had a secret desire to be a sheepherder in Australia. Even though he has never realized this dream, he rides the bumpy rails and sometimes almost feels as if he has become a sheepherder, gathering the sheeplike riders from one station and delivering them to another. But now he is grown and has a wife and children, and his dream seems far away. Who is the head sheep, the ones who lead and don’t follow. And is there no more to life than this? His life is careening down a dark tunnel, away from the dreams he once had. And then, and then, he sees Slake’s sign and realizes in a moment of epiphany that he is not some type of overlord unwittingly living out his life and controlling others senselessly, but the head sheep himself, and therefore led by a wise Shepherd. The realization changes Willis Joe’s life, and Slake’s life as well. Indeed, as Psalm 100:3 states, “Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

I am thankful that I’m not alone in my praise for this amazing book. As Claudia Moore wrote in a review of the audio book: "This unusual story combining coming of age with adventure will be sure to please many young teens."
Moore, C. (2001). Slake's Limbo. School Library Journal 47(4), 92 .

This would be a great book to couple with books like Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, or My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It is a survival book in its own way—just the urban jungle instead of the Canadian north or the Adirondacks in winter. It would also be nice to pair with From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. Can you see the similarities? I think it is a natural combination.

One Thin Dime

Yesterday while filling in at the circulation desk, I was giving change to someone after she paid a fine, and I saw something odd in the dime drawer. When the woman left, I looked again and found a silver Mercury dime. I dropped a quarter in trade, and have been feeling the slippery, 66-year-old surface all day. A sign? Maybe so, maybe no. At any rate, it is an unexpected treasure.

Spring!

Yes, spring is here.
Hallelujah!

Silence

I have lived before this with a silence
That sank into the rhythm of my soul.
It started quiet and almost welcome---
A thin, peaceful gap between stress and stress,
A space to reacquaint myself with me.
But slowly, as the chasm spread, I felt
Color and music draining from the world.
Until a light, a bridge, a slender strand
To reconnect with everlasting bands
Each yearning side---no more to separate.
So now I know that silence will not last:
After a needed pause a voice will sound,
And make the union stronger than before.



There is silence
And then there is an end to silence.

Joy and reconciliation will come.

The one for whom the silence exists
Feels the heavy air.

I'm still praying.
I haven't stopped praying.
I won't stop praying.

Whenever my mind quiets,
It drifts into prayer,
and hope flits into view.

They can prohibit contact
but not thought.

Nothing is lost forever.
It will come back brighter than before.

Cause and effect

No, I'm not cynical. I just know that when all the other options are gone or impossible, what is left must be the truth, whether people will accept it or not.

All I Can Read

The only thing I can read right now is poetry. Actually, even poetry is hard because it makes me feel, and see, and think. But it is better than the alternative.
Er ist gestorben, und mit ihm mein Herz. With what friend is it worthwhile to exchange thoughts?
Vielleicht wird es leichter werden, aber . . .

Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, -- so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.