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Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The CBR12 Book Bingo Reading Challenge Has Begun—Get the Official Card and Play through October 31!

They danced by the light of the moon

The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

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It’s International Children’s Book Day! Are you reading stories to young kids or wishing someone would read to you?

To honor this holiday, which celebrate the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, I’ve recorded a video of me reading a pop-up children’s book of the poem The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear.

 

I’ve read this book hundreds of times over the years, and the last page always gives me a thrill, “And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon. The moon, the moon. They danced by the light of the moon.”  It’s so calm and lovely.

It also always reminds me of the scenes in It’s a Wonderful Life where they sing the song Buffalo Gals, badly and out of tune on the night of their first date.

My older daughter received this book as a Christmas gift in 1999 from my parents, and those who know our family will get that it was so long ago, it was before my father was called Pop-pop.

I hope you enjoy my little reading. You can also watch videos of other Cannonballers reading Kid Lit in the Cannonball Read Book Chat Facebook group. Enjoy!

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The Beautiful Things That Heaven by Andre Dubus III

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WP 5.4 is a bitch

Tom and Jerry and Frank and Sam by Rene Auberjonois

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t must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale’s prodigious head hanging to the Pequod’s side. But we must let it continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it. For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now for the head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold.

Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit, gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking anywhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the capture of those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not commissioned to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers of them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the announcement was made that a Right Whale should be captured that day, if opportunity offered.

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Lucky Towns in France by John Smith

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Beans Freddy Nightingale

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In most cases this lower jaw—being easily unhinged by a practised artist—is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.

With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an anchor; and when the proper time comes—some few days after the other work—Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building houses.

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Lucky Towns in France by John Greenfield

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As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may be compared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale’s head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker’s last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny.

But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit and look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole head for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass—this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the “crown,” and the Southern fishers the “bonnet” of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak, with a bird’s nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term “crown” also bestowed upon it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter’s measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.

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The Graveyard Apartment by Sheri S. Tepper

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I have a friend who likes to loan me sad books, and when I finish one and say “OMG that was sad!”, she’ll say, “I know, but wasn’t it SO well written?” I have a feeling that my friend and KatSings would get along well. My Book Exchange buddy got me this lovely, sprawling book, which is beautifully written and has an air of pervasiveness melancholy about it. I adored it anyway, and I appreciate that KatSings got me to read something that would not otherwise have made it to my radar!

This book spans generations. When a four-year old girl is discovered abandoned on the docks after an English ship arrives in Australia in the early 1900s, a tender-hearted shipmaster takes her home. On Nell’s 21st birthday, her father tells her the family secret, and suddenly her sisters aren’t her sisters, and her parents aren’t her parents. Her quest to find the truth continues on, finally ending with her granddaughter Cassandra.

The story covers multiple time periods: Nell’s biological family and their various tragic childhoods, Nell’s semi-tragic life after having her identity uprooted, Cassandra’s drifting life after her own tragedies happen. There’s a LOT of tragedy, is what I’m saying. But the characters are delightful, and the mystery is engaging, even if you know there are going to be sad endings for a lot of the people involved. As Morton drops more and more clues, you start to figure out how it all is coming together, but the journey isn’t rushed.

Bad things happen to people, good and bad alike, and the choices made to deal with those things can have huge, lasting effects. The choices forced upon these characters can sometimes make your heart ache, even as you understand why they’re choosing those paths.