Books – Page 3 – The Paper Dart

What does The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown have to do with The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett? Kind of a lot (although I’m not sure whether Bennett would appreciate the comparison). Both are about the constraints of identity and the ways in which we spend our lives fighting against them. Both focus on the parents-child relationship, and the temptation both parties often feel to run away (and then back to) each other. Both are about the power of transformation, and its ability to bring us together, but also tear us apart. And both of them are about bunnies. (Just kidding.)

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is about two sisters (Stella and Desiree), who are raised in a tiny, African American town in the south, so small that it is almost invisible. The girls are both light enough to pass as white, but only one makes the choice to do so. The book switches back and forth in time, telling the story of the twins’ divergent lives, as well as the converging fates of their daughters. This book deals with racism, both within the African American community, and in the country at large, as well as themes like the fluidity of identity, and the ways in which one’s sense of self is driven both by the very real world they inhabit, as well as the lies and half-truths they are told about it.

There is a strong emphasis on the power of history in this novel: all of the characters desperately want to escape something, or become something new, but are, at the same time, irrevocably tied to the past. Some of the characters feel so trapped in what they believe to be true that they get stuck, and fail to see that they, like the world around them, are capable of changing.

I think what I found most impressive about this book was that the characters were all so real–in a very frustrating and messy way. There were so many points in this book when I wanted to slap Stella, but I also found her desperation to maintain the facade she had worked so hard to build kind of relatable. Her daughter, Kennedy, was also completely insufferable at the same time that she was sympathetic. Kennedy’s life was built on luxury and luck, but also on lies, and it was this second fact that made it nearly impossible for her to develop any real sense of self.

Desiree’s daughter, Jude, whose name, as she points out herself, is a biblical allusion more than a pop-culture one, is the only character who, like her namesake, is able to catch glimpses of how lies and dishonesty have led people she loves astray. (The symbolism here, as well as the fact that Jude is so dark she is alienated from her community and “disappears” in photographs, is just so perfect.) But, Bennett doesn’t let it be that simple, because Jude also lies: to her mother, and her boyfriend, and herself at times. There’s another lesson here, I think, about when a lie is a lie, or an act of love. And, when Jude’s boyfriend “lies” about who he is, he also shows readers that a lie can seem like a lie to others, even when it is really just the truth.

In addition to their complex relationships with history and the truth, Stella and Desiree also struggle with motherhood, and the fact that their children are, in many ways (appearance being just one), so foreign to them. While I think that the racial and historical context of these feelings is important in its own right, I also think that all mothers, even those whose children who look like them, and inhabit the same “world” as them, can relate to the desperation the twins feel when they realize their children are moving further and further away from them. I thought the saddest part of this whole book was the void between Stella and her daughter, and the fact that, even after the truth was laid bare, the space was still there.

But then again, maybe this bothered me because the existence of this void, in any parent child relationship, is unavoidable. The ways in which I made sense of the world, and the truths I constructed my identity around, won’t be the same as those my daughter experiences. The world today is already so different than it was when she was born, and there is no way a child who has to be a child now will completely understand someone who was a child 30 years ago (and vice versa).

Like the river Jude floats down at the end of the novel, the passage of time, and the erosion of the reality that I know to be true is both natural and inevitable. But I think what this book reminds me of most is that, while I can’t let the past control who I am, or how I see my children, I need to understand how it shaped me, so that I can let go, for both myself, and my kids.

The final thing I want to say about this book, and the part that made me most uncomfortable, was the fact that all of the characters spend so much of their lives alone. I think there is probably something purposeful in this–maybe a statement about how prejudice and self-loathing cause people to push others away, or hide from connection because they don’t feel worthy of acceptance? But regardless, the rampant loneliness really really bothered me. Desiree and Stella both show so much strength and fortitude in their own ways, but are so stubborn and fearful when it comes to letting people in. Stella even passes this trait on to her daughter who, in turn, spends most of her life pushing away any chance of a real relationship. I think, if anything, this aspect of the book was a reminder to me that it is always easier to shun real connection, than engage in it. But, at the end of the day, the only way to live is the latter.

ANYWAY, this book is really good. Go read it.

The Books (Click to Purchase):

Seeds and Trees by Brandon Walden is about a young prince who receives “seeds” from all of the people he speaks to in a day. Sometimes the seeds are green, and sometimes they are black, depending on whether the words exchanged were kind or not.

Every day, the prince goes into his forest, plants his seeds and tends to his trees. Since he doesn’t know that he has the power to do otherwise, the prince cares for the good and bad trees equally. Eventually, the young prince grows into a man, and his seeds grow into a forest of beautiful green trees, and ominous dark trees. The more he tends to them both, the more the prince begins to realize that the dark trees seem to be having a deleterious effect on the others.

When I taught 8th grade (I now teach 7th), my class always read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson, which is a story about dual identities, as well as the essential roles good and evil play in our everyday lives. Before I taught this book, I always thought of Jekyll as an “evil” character who chose to turn himself into a monster. However, in the novel, Stevenson’s Jekyll is actually a pretty sympathetic guy. He, like of all us, is just trying to figure out how to temper the evil impulses he recognizes, and dislikes, in himself. In the novel, he hates the fact that he feels the temptation to be bad, so he separates that part of himself from the good, only to find that the two can’t exist untethered to one another.

When introducing this book, we always read the Cherokee Legend of “The Two Wolves.” In this story, a grandfather tells his grandson that everyone has “two wolves” inside of him/her: a good one, and a bad one. There is no avoiding this fact, and no way to get rid of the bad one entirely. However, the grandfather says we can control which wolf has more power over our lives by deciding who to “feed” with our attention, and daily actions.

In all of these stories, the first thing that sticks out to me is the inevitability of “evil”: in the world, in ourselves, and in the actions of others. In Seeds and Trees, preventing the seeds from being handed out in the first place is never an option. These characters seem to know full well how futile it would be to try and control what other people choose to contribute to the world. I also like to think of this story, not just in terms of the battle between “good” and “evil,” but in terms of all of the “helpful” and “harmful” habits we all develop when learning how to interact with the world, and other people.

For example, I have always lived with a pretty high level of anxiety. I have spent a lot of my life feeding into my fears and living the worst case scenarios before they ever happen. At times, I have let anxiety take a toll on my friendships, my work, and even my health.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when my son, Max, was five weeks old, he came down with a bad virus, which turned into meningitis and landed us in the PICU. At the time, I was already in the throes of my “normal” postpartum anxiety, so Max’s illness, and the resulting total lack of sleep, really put me over the edge. I told myself that the only way to keep him safe, was to keep “feeding” the anxiety. I thought that I could only be the best advocate for my son if I stayed hyper-alert and on-edge. I had to watch everyone, and everything, even in the middle of the night. If I let my guard down, the worst would surely happen.

After Max recovered, the effects of this mentality still lingered. A few weeks later, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, telling her that I just couldn’t shake the lingering fear. It had been two weeks since our hospital stay, and I had pulled my daughter out of school, committed to an insane daily cleaning regimen and avoided other people like the plague. I felt like I had failed my son once by letting him get sick, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again.

My therapist considered this and replied with something along these lines: She told me that I could choose to view the future with fear, or I could choose to use the past to empower me going forward. Instead of being afraid that it would happen again, I could look at Max’s illness as the success story that it was. I could give myself credit for facing the problem head on, dealing with it, and coming out on top. I could tell myself that we had survived it once, and now knew, for sure, that we could survive it again.

At this point, I was so accustomed to feeding into my fears and anxieties that I hadn’t even considered the alternative: that, instead of fear, I could feed hope instead.

In Walden’s book, the prince doesn’t realize what he’s doing when he wanders around his forest, tending to his evil trees. He thinks he has to accept both types of seeds (the good and the bad) and give his heart to them equally. He doesn’t see how insidious the bad seeds are, because its their roots that are doing the real damage, strangling the good trees in secret, from below.

In Jeckyll and Hyde, Jekyll thinks that, if he separates his “bad” self from his “good” one, the good will be allowed to thrive on its own. However, in doing so, he ends up spending so much time in his evil persona that he almost entirely forgets to feed his “good,” allowing it to whither, die, and trap him in the bad.

Today, we are all living through a time where it is easy to allow ourselves to constantly give in to feeding our fears and anxieties. This past week, I have been looking into childcare options for when I go back to work in the fall, and all of them feel scary. Many days, I have found myself back in the same self-destructive patterns of imagining the worst case scenarios, and how they would all be my fault if, and when, they came into fruition.

At the end of Seeds and Trees, the prince’s friend (strong female hero alert!), open’s the prince’s eyes to the error of his ways, and brings him the tools he needs to start combating the negativity that he has allowed himself to sow in his own life. This friend helps the prince cut down the bad trees, dig their roots out of the earth, and throw any remaining seeds of negativity out into the ocean where they belong.

So I guess the lesson here is that, to be as successful as the prince was in the end, I need to be aware of how I am tending to my own garden. I need to be conscious of what I read, who I listen to, and what feelings I hold on to. But this book also reminds me that I can’t really do all this alone.

In times of anxiety, especially ones which require us to be so isolated from one another (like right now, for example), it is so important for us to reach out (to friends, family, professionals, etc). When we get trapped in our own heads, we are sometimes blind to the ways in which the thoughts we think are protecting us, are actually harming us. It was not until the prince in Seeds and Trees saw himself through his friend’s eyes that he realized how crazy he had been to water his bad seeds, and what he had to do to fix it.

Even in this time when we can’t be with each other in person, we need to be there for each other as best we can. We need to help each other weed out the negativity and fear we are being bombarded with on a daily basis, and try our best to grow something beautiful in spite of it.

Let me know in the comments what you guys are doing these days to “tend to your gardens,” and check out the links below to find the books.

The Books (Click to Purchase):

I don’t think I will ever forget being picked last for kickball in the fifth grade. I remember exactly where I was standing on the blacktop, and who got picked before me (Becky, also not good at kickball), and how hot my face felt when I realized I was the only one left. I even remember the kid who was forced to accept me onto his team: his name was Alex, and despite his niceness, he still rolled his eyes as I walked over.

I know that most people don’t make it to adulthood without experiencing this kind of childhood humiliation, and that, ultimately, it is good for us (builds grit, and resilience, etc.) But in the moment, it was truly crushing.

In the fifth grade, being good at kickball was everything. The cute boys were good at kickball, and the cool girls were good at kickball, and even the nerdy kid who got picked on for being super into Mancala was good at kickball.

I, however, was not. And we played it every. darn. day.

I would have given my teacher the entirety of my $20 life savings for her to secretly pop all of the kickballs on campus so that I could go at least a week without having to think about it. Alas, this never happened, and we continued to play kickball each recess, and sometimes before school, well into the winter months. (I grew up in Chicago, so unless the field was buried in 5 feet of fresh snow, it was still kickball weather.)

As a kid, my fixation on being bad at kickball seemed totally logical. The other kids valued kickball skills; therefore, those skills must be inherently valuable. And, because I didn’t have those skills, I must be less worthy (not just of being picked for the team, but in general).

This brings me to Max Lucado’s book, You Are Special, which is the best type of children’s book, in that its lessons are applicable to both kids and adults.

You Are Special is about a city of dolls (called “Wemmicks”) who are each a little bit different, but all equally judgmental of one another. When one Wemmick approves of something about another Wemmick, the latter is awarded a star. When a Wemmick disproves of another (because his nose is too big, or his clothes too ugly), a dot is given. Both stars and dots remain stuck on the Wemmick’s bodies as they go about their days, judging and being judged.

Does this sound familiar yet? If you found my blog through Instagram, it should.

In the book, Punchinello (a Wemmick who receives only dots), is feeling pretty crappy about all this judgment he’s getting from his neighbors. As he’s sulking along, he runs into a Wemmick with nothing on her. No spots, no stars. He is shocked and confused and decides to visit the almighty doll-maker (yes, there’s something allegorical happening here), to figure out what the heck is going on. After a brief chat, the doll-maker reminds Punchinello of how special he is, and reveals to him that the stickers are meaningless. In fact, he says, “the stickers only stick if they matter to you.”

When I was in fifth grade, the label “bad at kickball” mattered to me a lot. So did other labels, like “cool,” or “pretty,” or “smart.” I envied my friends who were “good at kickball,” or “outgoing,” or “funny.” My own brother was “smart,” “funny,” “popular,” AND “good at kickball” — in Wemmick land, he would have been covered in stars.

I don’t mean to say that labels aren’t important. I think that they can serve a purpose in helping kids reflect on their actions, or find friends with similar interests. I think that owning labels like “resilient,” or “hard-working,” or “friend” can help kids start creating a positive self concept that will drive them to live purposeful lives as adults. (Which is why we should all remember to tell our kids (and students) that they already are what we want them to be.)

I think that trying to teach kids not to label one another is unproductive. It is, after all, a natural and normal process, and something that kids need to do to understand their place in the world.

However, I think we do need to teach kids to understand that the labels we place on others have more to do with us than they do with them. Mark Manson wrote an interesting article, in which he said that “the yardstick we use for ourselves is the yardstick we use for the world.”

In the Wemmick’s world, the dolls who gave Punchello “dots” were doing so because they saw in him things they had been told to hate in themselves. During my own childhood, the criticism I gave myself for being “bad at kickball” was based more on the importance I placed on kickball than any inherent worth the game, or athleticism in general, held.

At the end of Lucado’s book, Punchinello leaves his maker’s house and smiles as several, but not all, of the dots fall off of his body. I particularly love this detail because it reminds us that growth doesn’t happen all at once, just as releasing the power others’ judgments have over you takes time–at least 32 years, in my case.

Right now, I don’t think my daughter has any idea that people judge her. The ignorance of three is blissful and beautiful. However, as she gets older, and especially when she goes back to school, judgment and shame are unavoidable. The best I can hope to do is teach her to think carefully about the judgments others try to make of her, and help her take control over which ones she lets stick.

The Book! (Click to Buy – or visit my page at bookshop.org)

Margot: 3 Years

Once Upon A Goat by Dan Richards

My second child, Max, was not an easy baby. First, there was the getting pregnant (a story for another day). Then, there was the staying pregnant (also a whole thing, and Ali Wong explains it better than I could). Then there was the morning sickness (otherwise known as “all-day, all-night, 15-week-long sickness”), the high-risk referral, the amniocentesis, etc. Finally, after being pregnant for approximately 15 years, I was induced, and Max entered the world with a bang.

When the nurse placed my squirming, red-faced, 9lb, 2oz baby boy in my arms, he was already shrieking. I looked at him in shock, recalling how my first baby had gurgled and cried a little, then nursed quietly for hours after birth. “Looks like he can breathe just fine!” the nurse laughed. “Uh huh,” I said, trying my best to smile as he pooped on me.

About an hour later, when the doctor was finally finished sewing me up, no one was joking, and Max was still shrieking. If I remember correctly, he screamed for the first three hours of his life: an especially impressive time frame considering newborns are usually only awake for a few hours a day. Yet despite his apparent distaste at entering the world, we were enamored with him. He was fat and squishy and perfect. And, unlike my first child, he actually kind of looked like me.

Soon after we brought Max home, we learned that he had colic, or reflux or, most likely, both. Every night between the hours of 5 P.M. and 10 P.M. my husband or I had to bounce with him (continuously) on a yoga ball, or else face the wrath of, as we called him then, “Mad Max.” I was at loss for what to do, and felt like a terrible mother. I couldn’t seem to make him happy, and bouncing with the newborn for several hours a night left little time for the daughter who had been my entire world for two years.

At around 5 weeks, our whole family was completely exhausted, but we had also finally figured out a few treatments that allowed us glimpses of a happier version of Max. Things were starting to feel a little easier, and I could see good days (and sleep) on the horizon.

The universe, however, must have read my mind, because the next week, my entire family was bed-ridden with a horrible stomach flu, and Max was in the PICU with viral meningitis.

From the time I rushed him to the emergency room at 2am on a Tuesday, until I finally slept again on Thursday night, I was a wreck. Watching my 5-week old baby get a spinal tap was absolutely horrifying. Seeing him whisked away by a team of doctors dressed in hazmat suits was even worse. For a week, he slept all day and wouldn’t eat. I remember calling my mom at the point when I felt absolutely insane from anxiety and sleep-deprivation, and telling her “this isn’t what I signed up for.”

“You don’t really get to choose,” she said.

Her statement was so obvious, but also something that, in that moment, I really needed to hear. Even though the high-risk diagnosis I received during my pregnancy with Max had required me to think a LOT about what our lives with him might look like, I was still acting on the assumption that I was entitled to the perfect story.

What I actually needed was to pause and remind myself that Max being born healthy (minus the night-screamies) was a true miracle. The road we walked with him in his early days certainly wasn’t perfect, but he still was.

Right about now, you are probably asking yourself: WHAT IN THE WORLD does this have to do with a children’s book about a goat?!

Well, Once Upon a Goat by Dan Richards is a truly ADORABLE book about a king and queen who wish for the perfect baby boy–“hair like ocean waves” and all. Their fairy godmother tries to honor this request, but, in perfectly punny form, ends up leaving them a goat (a “kid”) instead of a human child.

The king and queen are, at first, distressed by the situation. The goat makes a mess and eats their precious roses. He is not what they wanted. So they kick him out. I won’t give away the whole story, but, just so you can sleep at night, I’ll let you know that it turns out OK in the end. Ultimately, the humans and goats come together and realize that the family they have is definitely a little weird, but also pretty great.

Like this baby goat, our experience with Max was a little difficult. He didn’t sleep well, had (has) terrible stranger anxiety (quarantine has not helped) and was pretty whiney. His first year was definitely the most challenging year of my life, but also, looking back on it, one of the best.

Max, today, is the sweetest, cuddliest little boy. He constantly wants to be held and cuddled and gives the best running hugs. He loves stuffies, his paci and cuddling with the dog. He adores his sister, and his screech of delight when she chases him around the house is pretty much the best sound in the world. He loves food almost as much as I do and is (in my unbiased opinion) the cutest child on earth.

Despite the twists and turns along the way, I can honestly say that I do have the “perfect” kid. He loves me, and I love him, endlessly and no matter what. Max has taught me so much about myself, and about what it means to be family, and I wouldn’t trade our experience with him for the world.

Max: 15 Months

Where’s Spot by Eric Hill

Max is really getting in to flap books and, unlike his sister, he has yet to rip any of the flaps off! My favorite of the flap books that we have at home is Where’s Spot? All of the “Spot” by Eric Hill are fun, but both of my kids have particularly enjoyed the “surprise” factor of this one–after all, hide-and-seek is always a fan favorite.

The Books (Click to Buy):

My daughter, Margot, loves looking at yearbooks. The yearbook from her first year at daycare is her favorite; however, she also enjoys random yearbooks she finds in school offices, thrift store yearbooks, and the yearbooks from my own childhood that are still tucked neatly into the shelves of my old bedroom at Mimi and Grandpa’s house.

The method Margot prefers when it comes to reading yearbooks involves her pointing at EVERY SINGLE FACE in the entire book, and asking me to recite that person’s name, as well as a random fact or two about them. (For example, Ada from school has an iguana and wears Paw Patrol underwear.)

One afternoon, as Margot and I sat around reading one of my middle school yearbooks, I noticed that I could no longer recite all of the names from memory. Despite the fact that some of my friends from middle school are still a very important part of my life, my recollection of the tangential players was starting to fade. Even the kid I had crushed on in 7th grade (I know because my friend had not-so-discreetly drawn an enormous pink heart around the photo) was a stranger to me. But when Margot got to one, particular picture, I felt a knot of guilt begin to form in my stomach. This girl I remembered.

Trudy Ludwig’s book The Invisible Boy, which is BEAUTIFULLY illustrated by Patrice Barton is about a little boy named Brian who nobody seems to notice. Brian is sweet, and thoughtful, and imaginative, but he never gets picked to play sports at recess and he dreads sitting alone every day at lunch. Brian is the invisible boy, and not even his teacher notices him.

The girl I remember from my yearbook was my class’s invisible girl. For the sake of storytelling, I’ll call her Mary.

In middle school, Mary had pretty much zero social capital. She didn’t wear the “right” clothes, or wash her hair often enough. She stumbled over her words when she bumped into you at the lockers, and she didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch.

When I was in middle school, I also didn’t really wear the right clothes, or know the right things to say, or wash my hair anywhere near often enough. But I did all of these things just enough to get by. I had a group of friends who I loved, and the idea of losing the safety of their companionship was terrifying enough that I would have done pretty much anything to appease them (don’t worry, I grew out of this pretty fast).

I have a lot of feelings about the role of shame and guilt in our lives and, while I don’t think we should spend very much time wallowing in these emotions, I don’t think we should hide from them either. When I think about Mary, which is more often than she would probably ever imagine, I let myself feel that shame. Even at 11 and 12 years old, I knew that all Mary needed was for someone to notice her. She needed to be greeted by a classmate on the way in to school in the morning, and to be invited to work with someone on a science fair project. She needed to go to a sleepover, and learn how to braid her hair, and where to buy dumb bedazled t-shirts.

At the time, I knew that Mary knew I knew this. (What?) Yes, I didn’t mess that up. Mary, I think, saw me as a sort of social bridge. I was just nice enough, and uncool enough to know who and what she needed, but I also had enough social capital to bring her up the ladder with me. Mary reached out to me a couple times, in a couple different, but equally awkward ways. I remember my friends laughing at me about it during Science class and, in my desperation to stay on the “right” side of the line, I laughed along with them.

Conversely, in Barton’s book, Brian finds his bridge, and his life becomes full and beautiful as a result (this is the part of the book where you cry, and the child you’re reading it to gets a little wigged out). The first time I read this part of the book, I felt pretty crappy. Middle school me could easily have made that simple magic happen for Mary, but I chose not to.

I also felt sad and worried and overwhelmed for all the other invisible children that we, as teachers, all had in our classrooms this past year. When school closed, they left the safety of our watchful eyes, and faded further and further away from us.

To be fair, there were a lot of things that worked really well about online learning. Kids learned to be independent and organized (to some degree), technology allowed us to continue delivering content, giving feedback and connecting “face to face,” and parents got a clearer view of their childrens’ skills and areas of struggle and, hopefully, bonded with them through the process.

But the Brians and the Marys of the world are who I worry about the most. These are the kids who turned on their avatars at every Zoom meeting, if they even showed up at all. They didn’t ask questions during class, facetime with friends, or respond to their teachers’ emails. It’s almost like they disappeared entirely.

To a certain degree, teaching has a lot to do with knowing your stuff. There’s that old adage, “if you can’t do, teach,” but I hope we all know that’s garbage. I’m really good at reading books, so I do it professionally. But teaching has even more to do with connecting with the invisible children, and making sure someone makes them feel seen. I am so anxious for this pandemic to be over, partly because I want to get a babysitter and go out to brunch again, but even more so because time is of the essence for so many kids. We need to get together again–in the classroom, on the playground, and in the community–so we can keep doing the work of reaching out, being the bridge, and bringing color and life back to our invisible kids.