I like Julie Andrews, I really do. And, admittedly, she started writing (as Julie Andrews Edwards) eons before many other celebrity writers (like Billy Crystal, Madonna, John Travolta, John Lithgow, etc.). So I really had high hopes for the Whangdoodles book. The title sounded funny, it’s been around for 25 years, it had to be good, right?

Well, no. I found it annoying at first and while it got slightly more interesting as it progressed, I think it tried to hard to be cute. I hated that everything had to be explained. Billy, Tom and Lindy did something, and then the professor had to make sure a moral was gotten out of it. Sigh. Morals about turning the other cheek, listening to what people mean and not just what they say, about genetics, about being lonely. Couldn’t we just have a straightforward story here?

The Phantom Tollbooth plays with words better, the Chronicles of Narnia deals with morals with a less heavy hand. There really are better books out there. However, I did ask my 8-year-old to read it, just in case I’m much too adult to appreciate it. Maybe kids really do enjoy it and I just missed the boat on this one.

I was pleasantly suprised by this book, by Mary Jane Auch. I don’t know what I expected; but the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 just wasn’t something that really seemed interesting to me. However, this was a really engaging book. I think Auch did a good job portraying the motivations of immigrants — the main character, Rose, is an Irish immigrant — and the hardships they endured when they first got to New York City. Rose is left virtually stranded; her brother is turned back at Ellis Island because of a disease, so her father took him back to Ireland. Her mother, who didn’t want to come in the first place (I liked that aspect) gave up after a few weeks and left too. That left Rose to find her way. The book is intriguing, but slow for a while as she gets set up. I think Auch hits upon lots of interesting themes: the sweatshop environment, the clash between different immigrant factions, the union movement. And then there’s the fire. There’s some pretty intense chapters near the end. It ended almost abruptly, but with some hope for Rose and her new life here. A good read.

This book wasn’t as powerful or as intense as I expected it to be. Still, I think, it’s a good introduction — it’s youth fiction — to the things that went on in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The story’s simple: the main character, Parvana, is living in Kabul with her family, under the Taliban. Her father is arrested and the family has no money or food. So, since she’s young enough, she disguises herself as a boy to earn the needed money. There are some intense moments, like the arrest, when I was very sad for the family, and there are several dispiriting stories throughout the book. But, in the end, in a way, hope prevails. I think the most upsetting thing is that the author, Deborah Ellis, wrote this after interviewing Afghan refugees in Pakistan. I guess you could consider this giving voice to the stories of the women and girls in Afghanistan.

The librarian recommended these, both by Carolyn Meyer — I had read Mary, Bloody Mary before, but I thought I’d read it again (she also wrote Beware Princess Elizabeth, which I know I’ve read also, but don’t remember at all). Of the two, I liked Mary better. Perhaps it’s because the story of Mary Tudor is more sympathetic, or perhaps it’s because Anne Boleyn makes a better villain than sympathetic character. I don’t know. In reading Anne, I found myself unmoved by Anne’s motivation to get King Henry VIII to love her, to leave his wife and to marry her. I found her rise and downfall uninteresting and the writing uninspired. It’s youth fiction, but that’s not an excuse. Mary was better, perhaps because the conflict was more intense — you can’t help but feel moved by a person who was banished simply because she was the daughter of the king and a rival to a person with ambition. In the long run, though, I found myself disturbed by the stories of these women who were so totally in the power of a complete jerk. I was going to readThe Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory (about Mary Boleyn) but I don’t think I could handle 650 pages of King Henry treating these women so badly. Maybe I’ll try again later.

I read, quite a while back, Love Among the Walnuts (Or How I Saved My Entire Family from Being Poisoned), by Jean Ferris. I don’t remember much about the book. What I did write was: Silly little happy book. Once Upon a Marigold (same author) could be described in much the same way. Ferris has a wonderful knack for writing stories that fundamentally make me feel happy. There isn’t much to Marigold: a guy, a princess, a troll, a wicked mother… what makes it so thoroughly enjoyable is the way she writes. The troll is constantly mixing his metaphors (“it’s all spilled milk over the dam” is my favorite). The princess loves telling awful jokes. And they all communicate by the “modern” p-mail (pidgeon). I couldn’t help but smile. It wasn’t “hilarious” but it was sweetly funny and endearing.