There’s a short story I read in one of my lit classes at BYU, called "Sayso or Sense," by Eileen G. Kump. In it, a woman is planning her dream home—she wants all the modern amenities. Since she’s living in the 1800s, those amenities are things like a deep, cool basement for canning in, and a southern exposure, and other details I am fuzzy on and cannot verify because I think I loaned my copy of Bright Angels and Familiars to Becky. (Becky: did I?) What I am not fuzzy on is the story’s conflict. Her husband’s father is helping them to build her house, and every single modern thing she wants, he says no to. In the story, she makes peace with this by way of a dream, when she realizes that men can have sayso or sense, but not both. This is one of the most frustrating short stories I have ever read (because so what if you have sense? if you don’t have the sayso to make your sense effective?), but it’s also a story I think about quite often, every time I drive past an old-fashioned house.

I was thinking of that story just last week, in fact, when we had a staff meeting at work, with the topic of our town’s history. Even though I didn’t grow up in this town (just a few miles south), I have a real affection for where we live, not the least of which is my love for Timpanogos and Cascade mountains, for the environment that seems effected, in a hundred different daily ways, by the mountains around us and by the people who first settled here. I have often wondered what our bench looked like without all of the population swarmed upon it. Besides, historical things are just generally interesting to me, so I was excited for our staff meeting.

And I wasn’t disappointed. The man who presented—an individual who is on the city’s historical preservation committee—had an amazing series of photographs. The very first one he showed was a black-and-white taken in about 1885, when only eight families lived on the bench. I had pictured the area, pre-settlers, as a pristine, beautiful spot, full of trees. In the photograph, Timpanogos looms over the landscape—and at its feet is a plain with a few scattered ribbons of trees, and miles and miles of sagebrush. Maybe it was beautiful, but only in that desolate beauty deserts have. The speaker told us that no one wanted to move to our area because it was so desolate. One early settler wrote in her journal that she’d given up her pretty house in Salt Lake for sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and coyotes.

He continued on with several more photographs—the original library, the first homes built in the area, the first schools and government buildings. There was a Japanese interment camp here (I didn’t know that), a sort of stopping spot before they were sent on to Topaz Mountain; later it was used to house German POWs, and then immigrant farm workers who came to work in the harvests. Each time he talked about a building, he’d tell us what happened to it—still standing (very few) or replaced with something else. I grew weary of hearing things like "and this home was torn down to build the McDonald’s" or "this one was demolished to make way for a Pizza Hut." History is so easily lost, and suddenly this town I love seems too slick and polished, too much a replica of everywhere else. I’d trade the McDonald’s for an historical home!

As he flipped through his fifty or so photographs that document at least a century, I found myself thinking about pictures now. We have so many—will they ever mean anything to someone? Those photos are so precious because they are so rare; they have meaning because of their very scarcity. It made me think about how I tend to take pictures, and of what—and to feel that I should broaden my horizons a bit, look beyond just my children and the occasional flower as subjects, but also the world around me. Simply because I can always walk outside and take a photo of, say, my house, doesn’t mean I do it very often. Maybe those things will have more meaning in another 100 years?

As the photographs moved up through time, I realized I was seeing a landscape very like what my grandparents would have grown up in. Although I don’t think I’m related to any of the original families who settled this spot, and I don’t know any of them now, I still got a lump in my throat, looking at their faces. Their lives, with their hot brick houses and long dresses, outdoor plumbing and indoor rattlesnakes, seems much more real a life than mine. Probably, like the landscape around me, I am romanticizing it. But, unlike the presenter—who kept saying how grateful he is to not live during those times—I still wish I could know how they really lived, the people who came before me. I’d like to walk their farms, sit under their fruit trees, walk into their homes. I wish I could taste some of the tranquility I have imagined into their existence.

My friend Sophia does this 10 thing all the time on her blog. I've tried before but have never made it all the way through---but this post, I am determined to!

TEN books I am dying to read (a list that's certain to change in about a week):

1.   Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels. Yet another book about WWII, but this one is written by a poet. I like reading novels written by poets!
2.   Old Friend from Far Away. Natalie Goldberg is an excellent writing instructor; this one is about writing your own history.
3.   The Memory of Water. My friend Becca loaned this one to me, saving me the necessity of buying it.
4.   Mistress in the Art of Death. Several people have recommended this one to me.
5.   Ysabel. It's sitting on my desk right now, waiting to be picked up.
6.   Being Perfect. I wish every woman would read a little bit of Anna Quindlen!
7.   Grendel. How have I not read this before?
8.   March. I'm rereading for a library project.
9.    The Night Journal, by Elizabeth Crook. The closest I'll get to reading a western.
10.   On Agate Hill. Because Lee Smith is awesome.

NINE things on our summer agenda:

1.   Go to the zoo.
2.   Go to the planetarium.
3.   Hike Baldy (Jake and I)
4.   See Jordin Sparks at the Scera (our little community theater)
5.   Hike to the meadow below Baldy (everyone---for a picnic)
6.   An overnighter to Goblin Valley
7.   A no-sugar week (although the kids aren't thrilled about this one, having survived the No Technology Week last week)
8.   Go to the dinosaur museum
9.   Go to Lagoon (an amusement park)

EIGHT fun things we've already done:

1.   Checked out Nelson's Grove, this gorgeous park in Orem with a duck pond and water fountains and plenty of hills to run up and down. Or to roll down, if you prefer.
2.   Went to the waterpark, Seven Peaks (my sweet sister-in-law Cindy saved me, as I lately have an aversion to Seven Peaks---it has everything to do with the aversion I have for my swimsuit---by taking my kids along with hers)
3.   Went to a parade.
4.   Splashed in Bridal Veil Falls
5.   Fed the ducks at the BYU arboretum.
6.   Saw a movie (Kung Fu Panda)---Our goal is at least one movie a month
7.   Saw The King and I at the Scera
8.   Summer reading program at the library

SEVEN things I love about summer:

1.  Letting laundry dry outside in the sun (just the things that don't go in the dryer, lest ye've got images of all our underwear whipping about in the wind)
2.   Watermelon
3.   Summer nights, after the sun's gone down and the evening breeze kicks up, and the heat is just a gentle warmth.
4.   Strawberries and raspberries
5.   ice cream bars
6.   flowers, flowers, flowers (my coneflowers just bloomed, and tomorrow I will be making a trip to the nursery for something new)
7.   no schedule to follow

SIX things I am grateful for right now:

1.  That Jake's bee sting he got on Sunday didn't swell as much as I thought it would
2. My AWESOME neighbor Cindy (who, if she's reading this, needs to leave me a comment so I know!!!) who saved me yesterday when I had a Brown Sugar Emergency. I seriously needed an entire bag and she had it in her storage.
3.   That Kendell and I are speaking in church next Sunday. OK, I'll be more grateful when it's over, but I still feel grateful for the opportunity.
4.  That my kids are adjusting well to me working.
5.   Surviving (almost) Kaleb's potty training, which has been far less dramatic than I expected. I've been joking that we are constantly on red alert, but slowly it's changing into yellow. No pun intended!
6.   That I made it home from my run yesterday. It's official: 9:30 is now WAY TOO LATE to start a four mile run. I kept thinking of that woman in the 1984 Olympic marathon...anyone know who I mean? The one who almost didn't make it, and sort of hobbled around the track at the end? Yeah...that's how I felt.

FIVE unexpected things:

1.   I found a new pair of glasses I really like. (Picking out frames is hard for me.)
2.   Bee stingers keep pumping venom until you pull them out. (I didn't know that until Sunday.)
3.   Nathan's talk in Primary on Sunday, which he told me about three minutes before we needed to leave. (Always save everything! I revised a talk that Haley had given in 1999, printed, and we were out the door.)
4.   The library is slightly uphill from my house. (I only know this since I started riding my bike.)
5.   I found some almond M&Ms! (They are my favorite, but lately I can't seem to find them anywhere.)

FOUR ways I am exercising lately (not that it's doing any good to my insists-on-staying-chubby body):

1.   Running
2.   Riding my bike to work (a perk of living only 2 miles from your job!)
3.   Piyo (a combination pilates & yoga workout at the gym)
4.   Trying to suck in my belly every time I put a swimsuit on

THREE things I am working on:

1.   My new Big Picture class
2.   A rag quilt I am (gasp!) keeping for myself (well...this only counts if "working on" is synonymous with "shopping for")
3.   A book club booklet for the novel Atonement.

TWO classic summer dinners at my house:

1.   Chicken salad croissant sandwiches
2.   Pasta salad and grilled ham-and-swiss sandwiches

ONE hope for the upcoming month:

1. Everyone stays happy!

We live close to the Provo Canyon, with its fabulous river trail. Now that I've dedicated myself to training for a half-marathon in October, I've taken up running again on the river trail for my longer runs. I've forgotten, during the year I didn't run, how much I love the canyon. I do my shorter runs on routes I've devised around my general neighborhood, and while there are benefits to running in town---street lights make great measurements for fartleks, as do blocks for intervals, and I love seeing different architecture and the varied approaches to landscape design---I often find myself a little frustrated with things like stop lights, the escort of barking dogs along chain link fences, car exhaust, and the occasional cat call (yes, teenaged-boys-in-your-cool-red-car, I'm aware I'm not yet skinny and should "keep on chuggin'"). And of course there are frustrations on the river trail, namely how crowded it gets (it’s easier to park at Disneyland than at the mouth of the canyon sometimes), and the longboarders flying down the canyon (I decided that it’s not the boarding itself that bugs me, but the noise of the wheels), and people with their dogs (who seem to easily forget that there are still leash laws, and hello? we’re in the mountains, and there are weeds for your puppy to poop in not four feet off of the trail, dogpeople!). Plus, I feel guilty over driving to go running, you know?

But still. Even with the crowds—and especially as you get higher up into the canyon—it is so peaceful, running in the canyon. Shade alternates with sunlight, an organic pattern, and the air has that coolmoist mountain scent. Right now there are wildflowers, Indian paintbrush and wild yellow snapdragons, wild roses (which, I’d guess, were planted long ago by settlers whose cabins are now vanished) and others I don’t know the names of. Just the sound of the river makes the air feel cooler; it is a sort of underlying conversation, a murmur of encouragement. The trail itself is a gentle uphill on the way up, which means a gentle downhill at the end of the run. And within the crowds of bicyclists and longboarders (and the occasional rollerblader) are other runners. There are enough who are slower than me that each time I spot someone around a curve, it’s an impetus: I try to catch up to them to pass them, and suddenly I find more energy and just a little bit more speed. And, less that sound condescending of runners slower than me, there are plenty of runners who are faster than me, and I’m certain that passing me is one of their motivators, too. But mostly it is the sense, as I run, that I have left suburbia behind, that nature in her green fierceness is pushing me along.

Thursday is my day off this week. I woke up late (8:30 constitutes late in my world) and lazed around a bit. Got laundry ready to go, made chocolate-chip pancakes for the kids while they worked on building a blanket fort in the front room. Later, I think we'll go to feed the ducks. Working helps me remember even more what I love about my life right now, and I am feeling this overwhelming sense of goodness today; I adore my children (who are giggling in their fort as I write), am blessed with a home filled with the warm scent of pancakes (think about everything that goes into a pancake, and not just the measuring and mixing and cooking, but the farm work, and where'd the vanilla come from, and even just the sunlight, and suddenly a pancake can seem like a miracle), have plans to carry out that will make everyone happy. Life is good.

I looked out the window, eating my pancakes in the quiet kitchen (because I'm always the last to actually eat pancakes), and realized that my catalpa tree is, just today, at the peak of its prettiness (I am really dislike the way Typepad is making my photos look):

Usually it blooms the first week of June, and by now all the blossoms have browned and dropped off. So I am savoring the fluffy, somehow-angelic blooms on my tree. It sounds insane, I'm sure, but I went outside and lay on the grass in the shade of the tree, looking up through the green leaves and white blossoms to the blue sky. Happy to be alive.

So, tell me: what is making you happy today?

One of the first classes I took when I first started working on my English degree was a mythology course. I loved that class; I learned much about archetypes, the hero's journey, mythic themes and ideals---all concepts I continue to think and write about. For my end-of-class project I studied Celtic mythology (one day I want to write a novel based on them, as I think far too few people know the Celtic myths) as well as assembling an anthology of poetry about myths written by women. Plus, of course there was the requisite study of the Greek myths (my favorite is Persephone). And we read the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. I wish I'd kept the book we read, as the translation was excellent---accessible and entertaining, but still set into a poetic form. I'd never read the old classics---I thought they'd be boring---and I fell in love with them, an affection that leads me to read all sorts of novels based on the Trojans et al.

So when I discovered Ursula K. le Guin's Lavinia, I knew it was a must-read for me. Lavinia becomes Aeneas's second wife, after his adventures at sea, in Carthage, and in the underworld. She's who his last battles are fought over, but she's mentioned only briefly in the epic poem. But honestly, you don't have to have even read The Aeneid to love this book, because Le Guin fleshes out the characters and story so well. She's excellent at world making, and Lavinia is no exemption. The world of ancient Italy, its customs, traditions, and living conditions, are brought to interesting, vivid life. Especially important is their religion, how they make decisions based on prophecy, oracles, and signs. This is a direct contrast with how Vergil presented his gods in the Aeneid---Juno stirring up storms, Venus stirring up hearts and affections, the Fury Allecto stirring up war. Instead, in Lavinia's world, the gods are a sort of gentle force, rising up from the earth in beneveolent forms like healthy crops and clean water. Prophecies come at the place of the oracle, but through the voices of ancestors. Except for Lavinia---the prophecies about her fate come from the mouth of Virgil himself. In that way, the novel becomes not only about the story, but also about how stories are made. "It is not death that allows us to understand one another," Lavinia realizes, "but poetry."

Like the literature of antiquities she takes her spark from, Le Guin raises issues that still resonate today. How do our decisions affect not just our lives, but unforeseeable futures? Is the course of a person’s life built on fate or on decisions? Why do tragedies happen? How do we live with our sorrows? How can humans be so vile and yet so noble, all at once? How can we balance memories with our current lives? How can we live so that our lives are not wasted? How do our lives really interact with our religion? I suppose those are questions we will always ask ourselves. But, like Homer and Virgil, Le Guin manages to hint at some of the answers. One of my favorite ideas I will take away from this book: I think if you lose a great happiness and try to recall it, you are only asking for sorrow, but if you do not try to dell on the happiness, sometimes you find it dwelling in your heart and body, silent but sustaining. The purest, completest happiness I know is that of a baby at the breast and the mother giving suck. From that I know what perfect fulfillment is. But I cannot regain it by remembering, by speaking by yearning. To have known it is enough, and all.

Whenever I write a book note, the question I try to answer is this one: why should anyone read this book? When it comes down to it, I think almost anyone would like this book—a little fantasy, a lot of history, a titch of romance, a bunch of conflict and resolution. All in all, an excellent read!

Did I ever tell you that I’m working on more Big Picture classes? No? Well, I am. In a couple of months, you can take my Write Now! class (which is all about writing your journaling quickly but well), and then my new class, which I am so excited about (more details coming soon). Getting back in the Big Picture groove, I’ve been working on this quick, fun little project.

Don’t you just love getting packages? At my house, it seems like most of the packages are for Kendell—bits and pieces and parts, all computer-related (yawn...although I am glad he keeps my computer running!). So I was happy-dance happy when my Piggy Tales package came: a "Drawbridge" board book and a Ballad of Mulan bundle of pattern paper and chipboard letters. The board book has this ingenious binding that lets you make your layouts thick and bumpy without distorting the spine.   They’ve got board books with slides and flaps, but mine has expanding pages that open up, down, or right. These are brand new and so fun!

I’ve been working on some of Kaleb’s baby photos lately, so I wanted to do something non-baby, non-cutesy with this book. Something elegant. Lucky for me, I’d done a photo shoot with Haley, back in May, to celebrate her turning thirteen. The photos were perfect for the paper! All I needed was ribbon (because it is my favorite scrapping supply lately), a black StazOn ink pad, and an idea for what to say about the pictures.

I’ve been thinking a lot, since Haley’s birthday, about myself at 13, and what I would tell myself, if time travel were a viable option. Of course it’s not, so I told Haley some of the stuff I wish I’d known when I was thirteen (and far more awkward and ugly-duckling-ish than she is). I thought the expanding pages would be perfect for some hidden journaling. Voila: Haley’s adolescent handbook was born. Mind if I share?

The book was originally white. My pictures felt more dramatic, though, and I wanted a black background. But I also wanted to keep the subtle shine. So, rather than covering all those pages with black cardstock (which would have taken forEVER), I "painted" them with a black StazOn ink pad. Here’s the cover. I kept it fairly plain, since it’ll see the most abuse (click on the photo if you want to read the text):

Each of the inside spreads has at least one photo, something pretty, and three pieces of advice. Here’s page one, both closed and open (I love the little red flower on the H):

I loved the bold stripe on the pattern paper I used on the second layout’s fold-out page:

The pattern paper on the bottom of the third page’s fold-out was my favorite...although I really liked the bold floral, too:

I realized, putting this last spread together, that the yin-and-yang thing the paper has fits perfectly with the contradictory nature of teenagehood. The last photo is my favorite from the bunch:

A few other tips & tricks:

• I adhered the ribbon with little blobs of glue.
• "Seal" the edges of your ribbons by heating the edges with a lighter until the very edge melts (watch carefully for it—don’t light it on fire!)
• The StazOn takes about twenty minutes to dry completely.
• The fonts I used are Selfish and Baar Sophia, both downloaded free from the Internet.
• I bought all my ribbons at Joann Fabrics.

Want to see more ideas and samples of Piggy Tales’ board books? Check out these other Big Picture instructors’ blogs:

Lisa Damrosch

Lisa Day

Stacy Julian

So. I have this book checked out from the library. And it's way overdue. Like, three weeks overdue. And hello: I work at the library! I can bring it to work with me four days a week! But I've not returned it---even though I finished it awhile ago---because I want to say something about it. Only I don't really know how to say what I want to say. Which is not an unpredictable response for this unusual little novel, The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. It's hard to even explain. I could just throw the "pomo" tag on it and move on, I suppose. But the way the novel counteracts the fatal decisions we seem to make as a society, over and over again, is so simple and elegant that I can't simply overlook it. I have to say something about it, even if no one reads it or can make sense of it.

The Stone Gods is sort of a hard book to describe, as it doesn't follow the trajectory of a conventional plot. There is one world, very similar to ours if we managed to discover how to stop aging and make everyone beautiful while still failing to save ourselves from destroying our earth; it is dying a slow, red death. There is a white planet, which is like a skeleton (there is a white that contains all the colours of the world but this white was its mockery. This was the white at the end of the world when nothing is left, not the past, not the present and, most fearful of all, not the future . . . The world was a white-out. The experiment was done); the hard, useless, left-over bits of something that used to support intelligent life. And, circling the same sun, is the Blue Planet, which might be the answer to the dying planet's problems. Except for the inescapable propensity man has for violence, destruction, stupidity, and selfishness. Oh, and there's also a bit about Easter Island, as the natives cut down the very last tree on the entire island, which used to be covered with its own, unique species of palm. All of these worlds are sort of echoes of each other, and as you read you're not really sure which planet you're on. You start to see, as Billy does, that "the universe is a memory of our mistakes."

The characters are strange, too. There's Handsome, the downright sexy space captain with his brilliant plans for repopulating the Blue Planet, who is also a burly cantina man living in the post-Three-War radiation-tainted outskirts, trying to rebel against the social constructs of his time that make living with free will nearly impossible. There's Spike/Spikkers, who is sometimes a man abandoned on Easter Island and, in other places, a female robo sapiens invented with the desire to remove religious thought, human emotion, and subjectivity from the making of decisions that affect the entire planet. She's programmed with all the words of all the wise thinkers in history, and she spends an inordinate amount of time existing as just a head. And then there's Billy, the novel's sort-of protagonist, who in all cases works for society, until he/she doesn't, and her choices (along with all of humanity's, especially the nameless, faceless corporations whose primary goal is revenue) interact with the social events that are the conflict, climax, crises of the novel.

Plus, it's a metafictional work---writing about writing. The Billy on one world finds the story that Billie in another world wrote, and it is the thing that saves her---in a way. Spike, too, is influenced by writing, and uses writing, especially poetry, as a way of making sense of the world. In the spacecraft, Handsome has hung up bits and pieces of literature that he rescued from outer space. "We thought we'd hit a meteorite shower," he explains, "and I saw that what we were flying through was a bookstorm---encyclopedias, dictionaries, a Uniform Edition of the Romantic poets, the complete works of Shakespeare." Which answers the question "what happens to books once someone stops reading them?" I suppose.

You with me still? I told you it was a trifle strange. Probably I need to quit reading this sub-genre of speculative fiction (the one concerned with pre- and post-apocalyptical ideas and issues), because it is making me fairly gloomy. This novel presents the idea that humanity isn't just destroying this planet we live on right now, but that we've been a sort of scourge throughout the universe, inevitably rising up and eventually---also inevitably---destroying ourselves. It is not a gentle book; there are murders and mass extinctions and child exploitation, war and war and war, starvation, cruelty, environmental destruction. The final twenty pages should be read in one sitting, because you will not be able to tear yourself away from the ugliness. But. There is also the opposite propensity, our other ability to make beautiful things---like poems, which are the key to Spike's growing ability to feel emotion (and you know I love a book that puts forth poetry as a solution). Like the way, as we damage things, we continue to remember the pristine way things used to be---yearn for it, really. Or like our ability to think figuratively, as in Billie's self-realization (The truth is, I've spent all my life with my binoculars trained on the Maybe Islands, a pristine place of fantasy that is really no better than the razor-rocks of misery. . . Maybe that promised land was there and I missed it. Look at it glittering in the light. But the truth is I am inventing the maybe. I can only make the choices I make, so why torture myself with what I might have done, when all I can handle is what I have done? The Maybe Islands are hostile to human life.) Like our ability to feel emotion---our abiliity to love. "Love is an intervention," Billie eventually realizes, really the only one that might have saved us.

What is interesting to me is that all of these good human things, that could save us, fail to do so because we get it too late. Like Billie's Maybe Islands---she realizes too late that she's not living with her choices, but floating along waiting to bump into what might have been. If she'd realized it sooner, the outcome might have been immensly changed. And while it is discouraging, it is also a hopeful thing. Like, maybe someday we'll finally manage to do the right thing before it's too late. And that's really the oddest thing about this book: even though I finished it feeling like "we really do keep making the same mistakes again and again, never remembering the lessons to be learned," I also felt strangely hopeful that maybe, this go around, we'd manage to let love really be an intervention.

So. I've at least managed to say something about this book. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone---it's got a little bit of eroticism, but mainly I know that not everyone likes the variegated style that Winterson uses. But I still wish that plenty of people would read this, just to make themselves take a look and see what each one of us can do to make things better. At any rate, it's finally been returned to the library.

1.     I bought a new skirt today at Old Navy, a knee-length, black, kicky little skirt. I wore it to work, and while I'm fairly certain I looked like a chubby girl who forgot that she only used to be skinny and have great legs, I still had that "I feel cute today" feeling.

2.    Dear rude library patron whose rudeness transcends my limited Spanish: Yes, I know my proficiency is "muy mal," just as you told me. Feel lucky you're not the lady I kept saying "speak skinnier" to the other day (instead of "speak slower"). Despite your angry proclamation (and thank you for saying it slowly so I could understand), I don't think we are obligated to provide you a librarian who speaks better than my muy mal Spanish. Especially since you couldn't ask nicely. (OK, I hope that doesn't sound rude. I'm just of the opinion that when you come to a foreign country, everyone else shouldn't have to learn your language. You learn the language of the country you come to.)

3.    Kaleb has slept in his very own bed for three nights in a row. Seriously, that is a world record. Three entire nights of pure, almost-uninterrupted (see #4) sleep? Without waking up with his head cutting off all circulation in my hand? I didn't think it could happen.

4.     Of course, I'm still having the stress dreams. Every night I half-way wake up, certain that I have fallen asleep in the staff break room, and I am locked inside the library. Even though I'm seeing my bedroom with my very own eyes, I still think I'm in the break room. At least, though, I recognize that I am in my pajamas rather than naked. That's an improvement. Still---could I get just one night without a bad dream?

5.    A library patron came up to me tonight and said this: "I am afraid I have unimpeachably impeded the flow of water in the commode waste receptacle, and I do not know an attainable solution." My response: "           ." After said awkward silence, she translated: she had clogged the toilet, and didn't know where the plunger was. Well, hello: neither do I! And I didn't need to know about her special skill!

6.    I am in love with this photo of Kaleb. It is his very favorite birthday present, which I bought on sale at the grocery store for $1.99. Unless he is sitting in it, he is running around like this. I believe that, if I let him, he would sleep with it. (Note that we did get him other gifts---I'm not that cheap!---but this one is his favorite.)

Robin McKinley is one of my favorite adolescent lit authors. She writes fantasy novels, but they’re not cheesy or schmaltzy or pointless; they’re well-written and intelligent and thoughtful. Really, aside from the careful filtering of violence and intimacy, they aren’t only adolescent lit; she is an author I’d recommend to just about anyone except for reluctant readers. So when I discovered she’d written an adult novel, I couldn’t wait to read it. (Although I did wait, on the hold list!)

Sunshine

is a novel about vampires. More specifically, it’s a novel about a human interacting with a friendly-to-humans vampire. Maybe even getting the titchiest bit romantically involved. Which of course sounds familiar to the hordes of people who’ve read Stephenie Meyer’s novels, or watched an episode of Buffy. What was unique about this novel was the world that McKinley created. It’s a post-apocalyptic place, recovering from a war in which all the dark creatures of myth rose up and fought against humans. Now there are special forces in the police departments dedicated to eradicating the left-over bits of werewolves and sorcerers and demons, not to mention the part-bloods who can do little bits of magic, like pouring coffee that’s always hot. And of course, the worst of the Others, the vampires, who still have that annoying need to drink humans dry.

Sunshine, the protagonist, is the daughter of a normal woman and a sorcerer father, although she’s not been with her dad since she was an infant. Her father’s family, though, was a powerful magical family, and her grandmother (who insisted on seeing her) taught her some few magical things, namely transmutation (feather to flower) before disappearing during the war. She works in her family’s coffee shop as the baker extrodinaire (seriously: I bought cinnamon rolls twice during the reading of this novel). All of Sunshine’s complex mix of issues, insecurities, unknown history and magical abilities start to evolve on the night she decides, sort of on a whim, to drive out to the old house her grandmother used to live in, before the war, by the lake. She gets nabbed by a gang of vampires, brought to another old house—this one a mansion—and shackled to the wall next to a very hungry vampire.

What progresses from there is nearly the rest of the novel. Sunshine is a fully-fleshed character; she’s got her own way of looking at the world and dealing with stuff, and a lot of it is sarcastic and funny. The story is intriguing and the world vividly created, but it’s also full of introspection and little tangents where Sunshine figures things out in her head, cuing you in on how her world works as she comes to her resolutions. While this helps to create the vividness of the character and her world, it also could be distracting to some readers. Still, though, even though the world is only sort of like ours, I found myself realizing that while this is a book about vampires, it’s also a book about finding out what your true identity is, bad spots and good spots and all. Several times Sunshine asks herself which part is stronger in her, the dark or the light—and hasn’t everyone asked themselves that, once in awhile? Another idea I liked: she realizes that she is "still finding out I had more stuff to lose by losing it." The hardest way to discover your blessings, but also the surest way to appreciate them. Even if it’s rapid vampires who are trying to take them away.

Out of all the books I read growing up, there are a few that remain strong in my memory; little snippets of images from them will simply pop into my brain once in awhile. Anne of Green Gables (I still would like to taste cherry cordial), Little House on the Prairie(I think of the pig-bladder balloon every time I buy regular, non-icky balloons), Noel Streatfeild's Shoesbooks (sarsaparilla, anyone?), Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet (how strange that I grew up to marry an IT man): all of these are still jingling around in my head, affecting my psyche, but none with more impact that C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. They're among the earliest books I remember reading, and I must have re-read them at least ten times. When I found out I was pregnant with Haley, one of the first things I did was buy the entire Narnia set and read it immediately, on the somewhat far-flung idea that what I was putting into my brain would affect her developing brain. I still have that set; Haley's read it twice and Jake is working his way through it right now.

So I guess it's putting it mildly to say that I'm a fan of C. S. Lewis. (Even his grown-up stuff, too, but that's a different post.) And, for me, seeing the movie wasn't so much about the story itself, or even (as in The Lord of The Rings) wanting to see the film version be as close to the book version as possible. Instead, it felt like a little reconnection to the bookish, shy child I used to be. I even made sure to reread Prince Caspian before we went to see it last Saturday, and I realized immediately that there would have to be more drama added. In the book, the battle is fairly mild, and Aslan's around almost all the time, and there is a lot of character development, none of which might add to that cinematic drama. So I expected much fiercer battle scenes in the movie, and a twisting of the plot, which is exactly what was delivered.

I think the film does a lot of things right. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous (I want to know where it was filmed so I can travel there!); the ruins of Cair Paravel and of Aslan's How spot on. Prince Caspian is perfectly cast, as are the rest of the Telmarines, and the Pevensies seem more believable as heroes than they did in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I especially loved Edmund in this movie, the sort of hidden affection he shows for Peter. The attempt at Dark Magic, to bring back the White Witch, was even better than in the book. And although Kendell kept laughing at the impossibility of the fighting mice, I was thrilled (in a very child-like way) to see Reepicheep on the big screen. The centaurs were wonderfully fey---wild and fierce and wise---and the griffins an unexpected inclusion. And the twists they added to the plot (namely the battle at the castle of Miraz) added the expected extra drama.

What I think the filmmakers forgot, though, is that while Lewis's fantasy can be enjoyed by adults (really: even if you're, say, 57, and haven't ever read Narnia, you could read them tomorrow and get more out of them than just a simple, fluffy fantasy), it was written for children. It is, in my mind, a story about children becoming adults but still holding onto the spark of their childhood. Take Prince Caspian. What was left out of the movie is that he believedin the old creatures of Narnia (his professor taught him about them), and when he found them in the woods he was seeing bits of longed-for fairy tales come to life. He becomes a man in the landscape of his childhood's imagination. Peter and Susan, too, who don't get to come back to Narnia, leave their childhoods in this world that nurtured them. The film almost succeeds in portraying this for Peter and Susan, but it fails with Prince Caspian.

Lucy, too, has her moment of knowledge. In the book, this happens earlier, and I think I like the placement in the movie---near the end---even better, because it really is the soul of Prince Caspian; the guts, really, of the entire Narniaseries. It is one of the images that pop into my head every once in awhile. While they are traveling to meet up with Caspian, Lucy sees a flash of Aslan, leading them in an unexpected way. She tells the others, but no one believes her, so she reluctantly follows the group. This decision leads them far out of the way, resulting in more losses on the battlefield. When Lucy finally meets up with Aslan, she tells him she wanted to follow him, only the others were being so difficult. He simply looks at her, and she knows: she should have followed him anyway. She should have had faith enough to believe. (Aslan is, after all, the Christ figure.) When she realizes that her decision to not have enough faith resulted in more deaths than necessary, she is (of course) devastated. "What would have happened" she asks, "if I had followed you?"

"We can never know that," Aslan tells her. Lucy learns, in that moment, the way that faith works, how we sometimes have to follow a path that seems to make no sense at all, trusting that our sight isn't always perfect. This is the main theme of the book, the idea that turns it from fluff to something substantial. The movie almost manages to convey it, and so is almostsubstantial. Still, despite all my hesitations, I left the movie feeling like my childhood self had received something extraordinary. The much-loved story brought to life is nearly as good as what that version of myself really always wanted: to escape the lonely little confines of her world and be in Narnia along with Lucy and Prince Caspian and everyone else.