What we're reading

recs & links from Bea and Belle

Happy Friday, Frog Troublers! You might think we’re bummed about the rainy weather forecast for today and Saturday but we’re choosing to see it as a good excuse to drop everything and read. Let’s exchange some book recommendations, shall we? Here are a few of the books and articles we’re excited about right now…

Bea:

You know I love the Rick Riordan books, including the Rick Riordan presents books. One time I read a preview of Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky in the back of another Rick Riordan book, and it sounded really interesting. So my mom got me a copy of Tristan Strong books one and two, by Kwame Mbalia, and I could not put them down. They’re about African-American gods, and they’re really exciting. Tristan Strong is a great character. He’s very true to his friends, and he’s close to his grandmother—just like me.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis is a book my mom bought me in Selma (before we went to Birmingham). I was hesitant because I didn’t pick it out, and I usually like to choose my own books. Plus this book looked very serious, and not that exciting to be honest. But it’s really good! It’s told in the first person by Kenny Watson, a fourth grader who has an older brother and a younger sister. He’s on a trip with his family from Michigan to Birmingham to visit their grandma and hopefully straighten out Kenny’s older brother Byron, who keeps getting into trouble. Because of Kenny’s voice and his family this book is actually very funny, even though it’s about a very important and hard time in history.

I also read March books one and two by John Lewis, which my mom also bought in Selma. These are graphic memoirs about the civil rights movement, and how Congressman John Lewis grew up in Alabama, met Martin Luther King, Jr., and became an activist. It might be better for older kids, or kids who know a little already about that time period. I was lucky because I actually went to those places and had things explained to me by people who lived it, so I think I understood it.

A good book to read first is Stamped for Kids: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, which gives you some of the history and teaches you how to talk about race and racism.

Belle:

On our trip, I finished the excellent Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby. Set in the counties surrounding Richmond, Virginia and by an author who grew up close to me and my family, this thriller won Pete Mock’s Beltie Mystery Prize (among other honors, but that’s a big one around here!). The central characters, Ike and Buddy Lee, are ex-con dads reeling from the murders of their sons, who were married to each other. Though Ike and Buddy Lee weren’t the greatest fathers, they’re wonderful characters—flawed, grieving, mistake-laden, but capable of learning. Not for kids or the squeamish but totally unputdownable.

I also loved Euphoria by Lily King (not the same thing as the TV show), loosely based on the life of Margaret Mead. Set during field research on the Sepik River in New Guinea in the 1930s, it’s so absorbing—a good rainy-weekend read if you’d like to get away in your mind.

And I recently finished Yiyun Li’s Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—an outstanding collection, as all her work is. You can read the title story here.

And some excellent articles:

Should lakes and rivers have the right to flow? To be free of pollution? This New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert, about a lake suing to protect itself and the legal rights of nature, made for interesting discussion with Bea this week.

I always love reading about pawpaws.

Last fall, I taught this short essay by Sam Anderson about eating chips during the pandemic (which is about so much more than eating chips)—everyone in my class loved it. And this week I happened upon this essay, a follow-up of sorts, which begins with Anderson’s surprising choice to download an “annoying cutesy” dieting app to lose his pandemic weight. It’s in no way an endorsement of dieting or weight loss; it’s not about being a “husky” kid or even diet culture (“a fear of death disguised as transformation”)—Anderson uses those things to consider grief, identity, the body-and-mind, existence. I love, in particular, when essays ask truly preoccupying questions that can’t be answered:

What is the human relationship to the body? Is it like a roommate? A pet? A twin? A teammate? A rival? A parasite? A host? Is the body our essential self, or is it just an outer shell — and if so, is it more like a clam shell (homegrown, enduring) or a hermit crab shell (adopted, temporary)? Is it closer to a tamale husk or a hot dog bun or a pita pocket or the fluorescent cake-tube that wraps a Twinkie’s sweet cream center? Is the body the other side of the coin of the mind, or is the body the whole coin itself, and is the mind just the series of images and slogans stamped, superficially, on the exterior? Is the body an ancient piece of hardware designed to run the cutting-edge software of our souls? Or is it more like a hostage situation — is the body a time bomb strapped to our existence, the thing that will bring the action movie of our life to a sudden, unpredictable end?

I loved Anderson’s strangely joyful, affirming essay so much I read a lot of it out loud to Richard; the comments in the Times (where someone is almost always “well actually…”) are universally of the “this essay is the best thing I’ve read in forever” variety. So read it!

And what about you? Anything great to recommend? We’re headed to McIntyre’s after school for a little rainy-day book shopping. And our caterpillars (Harriet says “calerpittars”—don’t correct her!) arrive today, so we’ll be talking about them next week. Also, I know I’ve promised the embroidery reveal and we’ve almost finished it—look for that Sunday!