Dawn, by Elie Wiesel (review)

I have seen this book referred to as part of a trilogy, including Night, Dawn, and Day (also sometimes titled The Accident). Night, which I've already read and reviewed, is a memoir, so imagine my surprise at finding that the second book in the "trilogy" is a fiction. That was my first disappointment. The book spans just one night in time as the young man waits for morning, when he will have to kill a British officer in the name of the fight to free Palestine from British rule. During this time he is visited and spoken to by the ghosts of many people from his past. The story might have been fine—the struggle of a young man to come to terms with the sum of his existence—but for the use of trite symbolism and meaningless poetic text. Wiesel's clipped, contemporary writing style is what saved this from being a complete loss for me.

Book number 22 on my way to 52.

Mapping Oz

This needs no other explanation, really. If you've only ever seen the movie it might not fully make sense. You'll probably recognize the yellow brick road leading from Munchkinland to the Emerald City. The rest of this picture maps the land of Oz as described throughout the books of the series as written by L. Frank Baum. I found it, just like this, on the table in our office, drawn when I wasn't looking. That's my favorite kind of art.

What I love even more about this is that I can see he understands the idea at least of how to draw north, south, east, and west, since that's how the countries are described in the books. It's fun to see learning happen in context—a make-believe context, maybe, but an authentic one to the learner.

Nature Connections in May

May was such a strange month here. Disappointing, really. It's usually such a beautiful month of gentle warming, blossoming flowers, and soft breezes. This year it was cold for a long time, then wet. We had more than twice our average rainfall for the month of May, and most of that in the last two weeks. Serious flooding is a concern for many, and general saturation has kept us from visiting many of our favorite places, even with rain boots. We still connected with nature quite a bit, still spent a lot of time outside with plants, animals, birds—but mostly in our own yard by planting trees and plants and enjoying wildlife, and also on vacation by spending hours on the beach, and lastly in a few other places.

I like to join with other moms in linking my favorite nature activity of the month at Nature Connections, but this month our experiences warrant more of a general summary, I think, so this was how we enjoyed nature this May of the strange weather.

Planting for Arbor Day

On vacation, enjoying the sun and the lake.

Just being outside whenever we could, enjoying our favorite activities, like reading, games, or make-believe, outside where we could also enjoy the sound of the wind in our new trees, or the sight of wildlife nearby.

We planted native plants, mostly for butterflies, in all our new garden space.

We visited the garden store near our house where they always have tadpoles in their pond.

We got our edibles garden started

Construction paper mosaics

We've been wending our way through ancient Rome these past many weeks, and with all the rain clouding our days recently we've taken to the craft room more than we usually do during spring and summer. Or actually, this week's mosaic making found us on the kitchen floor where it was not only flat, but also more naturally lit right next to the sliding door (and these were very dark days indeed).

I had asked Calvin to go through our library books on Ancient Rome and pick out some fun activities. Mosaics were one of the things that had caught his eye. The book directions were for using clay, and some day we'd like to try that, but this time we created a fish mosaic of construction paper, cut into relatively equal squares with a paper cutter, adhered to poster board by glue stick. Calvin penciled in the design first while I started cutting squares. He found that it was easier to apply the glue to the poster board than to the small squares (less glue on the fingers that way, he says, although not by much). He glued small areas, then affixed as many squares as needed to cover that glue, then moved on to the next small area. I did most, but not all, of the cutting, and his favorite part was using the tiny scraps from specifically cut shapes to fill in gaps.

This was a three day project, mostly because all that cutting and gluing gets very tedious, and it was a great way to spend a few really crummy days.

Weekly book shelf, 5/28

A quote to share, from a letter to readers in L. Frank Baum's Magical Monarch of Mo:

"It is the nature of children to scorn realities, which crowd into their lives all too quickly with advancing years. Childhood is the time for fables, for dreams, for joy."

The last thing I believe is that children scorn realities, or that realities cannot be a part of childhood joys, but I do value worlds of magic and wild imagination as well, and what better place to find those than in a good book.

Anyhow, here's what we've been reading this week.

Here's some of what Calvin was reading by himself this week. We read The Wizard of Oz together last fall (reviewed here) and have been making our way through the series ever since. Now we're waiting for the next book to come in at the library, the first in the series as written by Ruth Plumly Thomson, and in the meantime Calvin decided to re-read the Wizard of Oz all by himself. This is by far the longest, most advanced book he's read by himself as yet, but he's having no trouble whatsoever.

  

Some picture books we read together. Bamboo Valley has long been favored around here. There's nothing particularly stunning about it, but it's a mixture of endearing and realistic. Like Bird, Butterfly, Eel it's the real story of this majestic animal, mostly devoid of anthropomorphism. Then I'm not a huge fan of Jan Brett, but Town Mouse Country Mouse is one that I do just fine with. Lastly, The Great Kapok Tree is a parade of beautiful rainforest animals arguing for the life of their forest. This one I love not only for its message, but also for the beautiful illustrations.

While we wait for the next Oz book to come in at our library we've been reading the short stories of The Magical Monarch of Mo, also by L. Frank Baum, written before the Oz series. I'm still in love with Baum. And Jon has been reading The Arabian Nights with Calvin, too.

 

On my bookshelf this week... for fiction I've started Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, in which I'm still on Swann's Way. In non-fiction I finished In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson, and am starting on Night, by Ellie Wiesel.